Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[MADAM SPEAKERin the Chair]

PRIVATE BUSINESS

CITY OF BRISTOL (PORTISHEAD DOCKS) BILL [Lords]
(By Order)

Bill read the Third time, and passed, without amendment.

BRITISH RAILWAYS (No. 4) BILL (By Order)

BRITISH WATERWAYS BILL [Lords] (By Order)

CROSSRAIL BILL (By Order)

EAST COAST MAIN LINE (SAFETY) BILL (By Order)

GREATER MANCHESTER (LIGHT RAPID TRANSIT
SYSTEM) BILL [Lords] (By Order)

WOODGRANGE PARK CEMETERY BILL [Lords]
(By Order)

Orders for Second Reading read.

To be read a Second time on Thursday 3 December.

Oral Answers to Questions — NORTHERN IRELAND

Tourism

Mr. Duncan: To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what measures he is taking to encourage co-operation on tourism with the Republic of Ireland.

The Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office (Mr. Robert Atkins): There is close co-operation between the Northern Ireland tourist board and its counterpart in the Republic in areas of mutual benefit to tourism on the island of Ireland. Recent initiatives include a joint travel desk at the British travel centre in London, a reservation system for hotels throughout the island of Ireland, accessible worldwide, and joint marketing in North America and Europe. I am keen to see this co-operation grow.

Mr. Duncan: Does my hon. Friend agree that co-operation with the Republic on a range of matters, including tourism, makes sense politically and economically, and should be welcomed by all communities?

Mr. Atkins: My hon. Friend has put his finger on an extremely important point: if we can co-operate in this area we can do so in many other areas, with the consequent good effects that it might have. I can do no better than draw the House's attention to an example of co-operation in which my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State was involved yesterday, when he launched the north-west passage tourism route. As a north-west Member, I am conscious of the importance to Northern Ireland of the north-west. Such co-operation will prove useful in years to come.

Mr. Madden: Is the Minister aware, however, that the prospects for increasing tourism between the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland will be greatly damaged if the rampaging Home Secretary has his way at a meeting of immigration Ministers on Monday, because tourists will have to carry passports, and citizens of the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland and Denmark will be regarded as aliens when they travel to other member states of the European Community?

Mr. Atkins: No more alien than a Member of Parliament from Yorkshire is in Lancashire. The hon. Gentleman raises an important point, which I shall draw to the attention of my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary.

Sir James Kilfedder: Is the Minister aware that the Republic's tourist office in New York deters—or at least seeks to deter—Americans from extending their visit in the Republic into Northern Ireland, and will he make strong representations to ensure that this practice is brought to an end?

Mr. Atkins: Yes, Madam Speaker.

Mr. Mallon: Far from the Republic of Ireland office deterring tourists from moving on to the north of Ireland, surely one of the strongest deterrents to tourists from the Republic visiting the north is the type of security


installations that can be seen at almost every point along the border. Does the Minister accept that those who operate in border areas, especially in Newry and South Armagh, face an uphill fight because of these military installations, not least the latest one at Cloughoge, which is a blight on the community and the entire environment?

Mr. Atkins: The hon. Gentleman should address his point to those who cause trouble—terrorists and others involved in paramilitary activity, who make such installations necessary. My task as Minister with responsibilities for tourism is to ensure that we attract as many tourists as possible, but my hon. Friend the Minister of State and the Secretary of State will have heard the hon. Gentleman's comments. They have made great efforts to ensure that the installation to which the hon. Gentleman referred is sited most carefully; unfortunately, it is necessary because we have terrorists and we must stop them.

Energy Policy

Mr. Ian Bruce: To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will make a statement on energy policy in Northern Ireland.

Mr. Atkins: Northern Ireland's strategic energy objectives are energy efficiency and the clean production and use of energy, lower costs and the protection of consumer interests, diversification of supply and security of supply.

Mr. Bruce: Will my hon. Friend tell the House what plans he has to privatise electricity in Northern Ireland, and whether he believes that privatisation will bring down the price of electricity both for individual consumers and for industry?

Mr. Atkins: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. As he will know, four power stations completed the first phase of privatisation earlier this year. I had the opportunity to visit one of them and I was most impressed with the achievements of the consortium involved. Clearly, privatisation will produce more competition and improve energy efficiency, and I am sure that the continued plans to privatise Northern Ireland Electricity will be successful. I hope that shares will be made available to a wide range of the public, which will allow them to participate properly in the ownership of Northern Ireland Electricity, as opposed to its being a state-run body.

Mr. Beggs: Does the Minister accept that in the past electricity subsidies to industry were part of our incentive packages? Does he share, or recognise, the concern of high energy using industries in Northern Ireland that the foreseeable increases in their electricity costs may put them out of business, and put out of a job all the people whom they employ? Will the hon. Gentleman go further than he has done to date to protect industry in Northern Ireland from unreasonably high future electricity costs?

Mr. Atkins: With his experience, the hon. Gentleman knows better than anyone that the position in Northern Ireland is unusual, in that we do not have competition from gas—although we have hopes of that in the not-too-distant future—and, as we are a peripheral part of the United Kingdom, there are some troubles involved in the provision of energy. I am aware of the problems

experienced by some large users, although, as the hon. Gentleman will also be aware, I have managed to obtain a two-year deferral of the implementation of those costs and have invited the companies concerned—incidentally, some of those companies will benefit, although I know that others will not—to take the matter up with the regulator in due course.

Mr. Colvin: Does my hon. Friend agree that for privatisation to work properly there must be competition? What plans has he for restoring the electricity interconnector with the Republic and establishing the interconnector with Scotland?

Mr. Atkins: My hon. Friend will know that the interconnector with the Republic has suffered from terrorist activity and has not been operational for some time. Plans are afoot to deal with the problem by way of alternative connections across the border with the south in other parts of the Province.
With regard to the interconnector with Scotland, we await further confirmation from Commissioner Millian, who came to see us in Northern Ireland not long ago, when we discussed the necessity of a grant. We hope that we shall receive information about that in due course, when we shall be able to implement the physical and energy aspects of that most important connection with the mainland.

Mr. Stott: As I understand it, the interconnector is due to be completed and in place by 1996. According to the Action Group on Northern Ireland Electricity Prices, that interconnector will be used only by Scottish Power and Northern Ireland Electricity for 10 or 15 years, so companies that use 1 MW or more will not have the opportunity to make individual contracts with any other Great Britain supplier. If that is true, how can the Minister claim that the Scottish interconnector will in any way increase competition with Northern Ireland Electricity?

Mr. Atkins: As the hon. Gentleman knows, there are two interconnectors. There is the gas interconnector, which will provide competition. Clearly, the operation of the electricity interconnector is a matter for Northern Ireland Electricity, in co-ordination with Scottish Power. If the hon. Gentleman has particular points to make, such as the one that he has enunciated today, I should like to know more about them, because that is certainly not my understanding at present.

Labour Statistics

Mr. Barnes: To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will give the latest available figures for (a) registered vacancies and (b) unemployment in Northern Ireland; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Cryer: To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what is the current level of unemployment in Northern Ireland.

Mr. Atkins: I apologise, Madam Speaker, for being the dominating force at the Dispatch Box this afternoon.
At 2 October 1992, there were 5,374 unfilled vacancies registered at local offices of the Training and Employment Agency. The number of unemployed in Northern Ireland on 8 October was 106,436, a fall of almost 4,000 over the previous month.

Mr. Barnes: I hope that the answer does not show complacency and that there will be some dominating action in Northern Ireland. The Minister will be aware that unemployment in Northern Ireland, despite the latest figures, is still the highest of any region in the United Kingdom. Unemployment helps to breed resentment and discrimination in Northern Ireland, and it leads to paramilitary activity. Tackling unemployment is probably the highest priority. Will the Government or the Northern Ireland Office be in touch with the newly elected Irish Government, who are expected to take office very soon, to try to work out an economic package for the island of Ireland which will start to tackle unemployment in the area?
Is not it a pity that Ulster Unionist Members do not understand that the Northern Irish people, including the Protestants, express considerable interest in ensuring that the coal industry in this country is not closed down? They therefore resent the vote here the other night.

Mr. Skinner: The question has got the lot in.

Mr. Atkins: As the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) says, the hon. Member for Derbyshire, North-East (Mr. Barnes) got the lot in. I cannot answer all the points without delaying the House unduly. I know that the hon. Gentleman takes a continuing interest in these matters, so I will address the point about the importance of cross-border trade, which is part and parcel of trying to develop companies, to expand companies and to create new jobs for those who need them. The hon. Gentleman is entirely right to say that Northern Ireland suffers from the worst unemployment of any region, although the slight fall in the past two months is a good sign and should be welcomed. My task and that of my ministerial colleagues is to ensure that we attract companies, that we expand existing companies, that we create new jobs and that, above all, we encourage extra trade between the north and the south.
The hon. Gentleman referred to the Irish Government. I have had conversations with my erstwhile counterpart, Mrs.—[HON. MEMBERS: "Come on!"] I have forgotten her name. She may change her job as a result of the election, but I shall continue to have contacts with her successor, whoever he or she may be.

Mr. Cryer: Is not the complacency of the Minister's reply reflected in the elections in Ireland where the people are voting heavily for a Labour Government of some sort who will revive the Irish economy? Is not the position north of the border the same? People are looking for a Government who will revive manufacturing industry and who will not build an economy on the fragile basis of extended credit. We have a Chancellor of the Exchequer who cannot keep his own financial house in order, although he is supposed to keep the finances of the nation in order. Is not he a reflection of the Government's total failure to provide jobs in Northern Ireland and in the rest of the United Kingdom?

Mr. Atkins: That sounds like another typical Yorkshire rant. We already have a great deal of co-operation with the south. Mrs. O'Rourke, the lady whose name temporarily escaped me, and her successor, whoever she or he may be, will continue to devote a lot of time to developing cross-border trade and to ensuring that questions such as the hon. Gentleman's do not have any foundation in fact.

Mr. Peter Bottomley: May I turn my hon. Friend back to the question of unemployment? It is a serious issue and not a matter for laughter among Labour Members sitting below the Gangway. The last time that unemployment in Northern Ireland was at the level of unemployment in the rest of the United Kingdom was in 1968.
One of the best things to do in building a new consensus on getting more jobs into Northern Ireland is to work not only with the south, as suggested by the hon. Member for Derbyshire, North-East (Mr. Barnes), but with the new President of the United States so that the United Stales realises that the way in which to help Northern Ireland is to visit it and to buy goods from it and to understand that violence harms employment.

Mr. Atkins: I entirely agree. That is why, like many hon. Members, and like the people of Northern Ireland, I am delighted to welcome visits such as that made by the hon. Member for Belfast, West (Dr. Hendron) and his colleague from Belfast, who recently went to the United States with a view to developing trade and finding new jobs for Northern Ireland. It is part of the Government's task to do as much as we can to encourage that process—not just in the United States and the south of Ireland but, with the completion of the single market at the beginning of next year, in parts of Europe. We need to attract companies and make them realise that Northern Ireland is a prime place in which to invest, to develop and to create jobs for people, from whatever part of Ireland, who want them.

Mr. Clifford Forsythe: What consideration has the Minister given to creating more employment by providing more finance for roads, in keeping with the policy in the rest of the United Kingdom?

Mr. Atkins: Every Ulster Unionist Member—or his council—has spoken to me about the need for more roads. I have considerable sympathy on this matter. The announcement of the public expenditure allocation for the block is not yet ready, but I know that roads are a subject which is dear to many people's hearts and I shall do what I can to alleviate their concern.

Mr. Barry Field: Given my hon. Friend's concern about unemployment and his answer to the question about peripherality in Northern Ireland, will the Northern Ireland Office be making representations to the Foreign Office on Monday—along with the Isle of Wight, Shetland and Orkney and the Western Isles—asking it to put on the agenda for the Edinburgh summit the agenda of the peripheral maritime regions conference for areas of the EC that are disadvantaged by their dislocation from a mainland country?

Mr. Atkins: As always, my hon. Friend speaks glowingly for his constituency, the Isle of Wight. I did not have it in mind to address that point to my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary, but if my hon. Friend thinks that the Isle of Wight and other parts of the United Kingdom should be included, perhaps that ought to be considered.

Mr. A. Cecil Walker: Would the Minister care to visit Harland and Wolff with a view to examining employment prospects in its ship repairing section?

Mr. Atkins: The hon. Gentleman extends an invitation which I should be more than happy to accept—again, as I


have already paid a couple of visits to Harland and Wolff and recently attended the launch of the Knockadoon, which will be most important to Harland and Wolff's future. The hon. Gentleman has a particular concern and interest, and I should be happy to go with him, at a mutually convenient time, to visit the section of Harland and Wolff about which he feels so strongly.

Intergovernmental Talks

Mr. Canavan: To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will make a further statement on the talks with Northern Ireland political parties and the Government of the Republic of Ireland about the future of Northern Ireland.

The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Sir Patrick Mayhew): I am glad to be able to provide a little competition for my hon. Friend the Minister of State.
I have nothing at this stage to add to the substantial statement that I made to the House on 11 November. I remain encouraged that the parties that participated in the talks agree with the two Governments that further dialogue is necessary and desirable and have committed themselves to engage in informal consultations about the way ahead.

Mr. Canavan: Is the Secretary of State aware that there will be a general welcome for his assurance that, whatever the result of the Irish general election, he will do everything possible to ensure that dialogue between the British and Irish Governments—and also, it is to be hoped, between elected representatives representing various views on both sides of the border—will be resumed? Does the Secretary of State agree, however, that such talks would be more meaningful if it were made clear at the outset that the ultimate aim is to negotiate democratically new constitutional arrangements embracing the whole of Ireland, and that such negotiations should continue even if certain politicians decide not to participate?

Sir Patrick Mayhew: I am glad that the hon. Gentleman recognises the desirability of talks taking place after the election is over. In general, that opinion is shared throughout Northern Ireland—and, I am sure, in the Republic. We should continue with the task of trying to establish a new beginning for the totality of relationships within Northern Ireland, between Northern Ireland and the south and between the two islands. That is what we are about. It is bound to take time, but, as long as people are talking, there is value in it, and I believe that we have made valuable progress.

Mr. Peter Robinson: When the complexion of the new Government in the Irish Republic is known, will the Secretary of State determine whether they are prepared to work towards the withdrawal of their territorial claim to Northern Ireland? If he feels that the Irish Government are prepared to work in that direction, will he assure them that the Unionist community in Northern Ireland would be delighted to see a Government in the Irish Republic who want to take the first and basic step towards a friendly relationship with Northern Ireland?

Sir Patrick Mayhew: I realise the significance of articles 2 and 3 of the Irish constitution to many people in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. I think that

I must leave it—and I can do so with some confidence —to the Unionist community in Northern Ireland to make its views on this matter clear to the incoming Government.

Mr. Trimble: Does the Secretary of State agree that the constitutional future of Northern Ireland is and can be a matter for the people of Northern Ireland and the House only? Does he agree that any questions about the future institutions of government in or affecting Northern Ireland should, similarly, be a matter solely for the people of Northern Ireland and the House? Does he appreciate that our anxiety to remedy the democratic deficit in Northern Ireland with regard to those institutions should be addressed by him and the Government as soon as possible?

Sir Patrick Mayhew: The House knows about what has come to be called the constitutional guarantee, and I need not recite it. The guarantee relates to the opinion of the greater number of people living in Northern Ireland and their wish to remain part of the United Kingdom.
Questions of democratic status which relate to political structures within Northern Ireland are part of what we have been addressing in the past six or seven months. They are an important part. Of course, any changes that may be necessary are a matter for the House. It is also necessary to examine the question of north-south relationships as well as internal relationships to see whether we can reach an accommodation of all the legitimate interests in the affairs of Northern Ireland. That is what we have been trying to do for the past six or seven months. That is what the people of the Province have told me that they wish to see continue. It will take some time.

Dr. Hendron: I know that the Secretary of State is aware that the talks are very much to do with peace and the historic conflict between the two communities. Above all, the talks are to do with the preservation of human life and law and order on our streets.
The Secretary of State is aware that yesterday afternoon a young man named Pearse Jordan was shot dead on the Falls road in the heart of my constituency in circumstances which are causing great concern to my constituents. Therefore, I ask the Secretary of State to set up an independent inquiry into all the circumstances surrounding the death of Pearse Jordan, bearing in mind—

Madam Speaker: Order. If the hon. Gentleman would hold his fire for a while he would see that we have security questions later on the Order Paper. At present his question is not appropriate to question 4 with which we are now dealing. If the hon. Gentleman will relate his question to question 4, of course I shall hear him. However, if he looks at the Order Paper, he will see that it contains specific questions about security.

Sir Patrick Mayhew: I understand the hon. Gentleman's deep concern. If we do not reach the security questions, I undertake to see him and deal fully with the question that he has asked.
I slightly take issue with what the hon. Gentleman said at the beginning—that the talks are about peace. The talks are not essentially about peace; they relate to the resolution of an ancient quarrel that has taken place over many centuries and which is still unresolved. We need a


resolution of the conflicts between competing interests in Northern Ireland. I shall come to the important point that the hon. Gentleman raised if I can.

Lady Olga Maitland: What steps is my right hon. Friend taking to reassure President-elect Clinton, following his remarks during the election campaign that he proposed to send a peace envoy to Northern Ireland? Will he inform President-elect Clinton that serious discussions are going on between all political parties and that they will continue to do so?

Sir Patrick Mayhew: I know that President-elect Clinton has been made well aware of the matter by our ambassador in the United States and by other means. It is important to make a distinction between what may be said in the heat of the contest of a presidential election and what may become the steady policy of the incoming Administration. I share my hon. Friend's concern. We had better wait and see how things develop.

Mr. McNamara: It might be a good idea if people read the letter that was sent. There was no mention of a peace envoy as such. Will the Secretary of State confirm that he welcomes any constructive help, aid, assistance and investment from the United States—such as the investment that has gone to Derry from Boston? I come back to the talks and the opportunities that they will provide for the new Government of the Republic in the new year. The Secretary of State has said that the talks are informal, bilateral discussions. At what time and at what point will the Secretary of State think it possible to have more structured discussions within the context of seeking that solution?

Sir Patrick Mayhew: We must wait to see how things develop. I know that the parties want to talk to each other bilaterally and that the Governments want to do so. I hope that we shall do so before Christmas. We shall have to see how we get on. Procedures, structures and the rest of it are the servants of the participants. We do not want to hold to one format or another, simply for the sake of it. The main thing is to get down to the business and keep talking business until we reach an agreement.

Mr. Hume: Given that 42 million people in the United States declared that they were Irish in the last census, and that those 42 million have roots in Ireland both north and south, does the Secretary of State agree that a powerful relationship can be cultivated on behalf of the people of Ireland, north and south? In particular, we could develop an economic relationship with a view to marketing the products of our small and medium-sized enterprises and securing inward investment. Does he agree that an envoy appointed for that purpose would be a positive appointment?

Sir Patrick Mayhew: An envoy appointed for that purpose would certainly be helpful. However, I pay tribute to the American ambassador here, who takes a great deal of trouble over Northern Ireland. He comes frequently and knows a great deal about it. I agree with what the hon. Gentleman said. Yesterday I visited the Ulster American Folk museum near Omagh. Last year 130,000 people visited the museum. A great majority were from the United States. I am glad to see that that tourist interest is beginning to be matched by commercial interest. There are

hopeful signs of continuing American investment in Northern Ireland, which is an extremely good place for anyone to invest.

Inward Investment

Mr. McGrady: To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what steps will be taken to promote inward investment in Northern Ireland following the report from the Northern Ireland Economic Council on job creation; and if he will make a statement.

Sir Patrick Mayhew: The Industrial Development Board's inward investment activity is reviewed regularly. I am pleased to be able to inform the hon. Member that action has already been taken to address a number of the recommendations contained in the economic council's report and that the others are being carefully considered.

Mr. McGrady: Does the Secretary of State agree that the report of the Northern Ireland Economic Council is depressing reading for the people of Northern Ireland? It shows that the number of firms inwardly investing was reduced by 41 per cent. between 1973 and 1990, with a consequent loss of employment in those sectors of 52 per cent. We can no longer hide behind the question of a terrorist image because, at the same time, the Republic of Ireland increased its inward investment by 27 per cent. Does the Secretary of State agree that the change in policy by the IDB some two years ago, to concentrate on product design and marketing rather than targeting the creation of jobs, needs to be examined by the Department? Will he give an undertaking to insist that the IDB honours its commitment to spread visits to Northern Ireland to South Down? Only 4 per cent. of visits in the past four years were to my constituency.

Sir Patrick Mayhew: The report to which the hon. Gentleman refers speaks for itself. It acknowledges the difficulty of attracting internationally mobile investment to Northern Ireland at a time when competition for investment is increasing. Nevertheless, the report makes specific recommendations. It calls for a more focused approach. Accordingly, the IDB is concentrating increasingly on the industrial sectors and sub-sectors which hold the greatest potential for Northern Ireland.
Of course, that report has been taken closely on board and the hon. Gentleman will see some changes in consequence. He mentioned South Down and I pay tribute to Down/Chicago Link Ltd, which has established structures in Down and Chicago, thanks to several visits by and the unstinted efforts of the hon. Gentleman.

Rev. Ian Paisley: Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman agree that the spate of violence in Northern Ireland is spiralling—the heart of Coleraine has been bombed and the heart of Belfast has almost been bombed again? Will he take it from me that the best thing that he could do would be to get on top of that violence and deal with it? Then people would have the confidence to invest in Northern Ireland.

Sir Patrick Mayhew: Of course I agree that the security situation in Northern Ireland is very disadvantageous to investment. I hear a great many commentators referring to the need to get on top of the IRA, implying that more should be done that is not being done by the security


forces, but I find them exceedingly short when it comes to giving particulars of what should be done that is different in character, quality or scale from what is being done.

Mr. John D. Taylor: While there is criticism within the business community about the performance of the IDB, does the Secretary of State agree that several negative factors are working against it, such as the IRA terrorist campaign and the worldwide recession? In view of factors of that nature, would it not be better advised to concentrate on giving greater assistance to Ulster business men and industrialists who are creating jobs in Northern Ireland?

Sir Patrick Mayhew: It is a question of balance. I agree that one does not want a single-minded concentration on the attraction of inward investment. I am glad that the IDB has about 460 companies on its books and that it looks for ways to help established companies, which I agree is just as important.

Mr. Viggers: Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that occasionally the people of Northern Ireland do not seem to appreciate the enormous effort and vast resources which have gone into improving the infrastructure there? If the menace of terrorism were lifted there is no reason why it should not be as prosperous, and have as low a level of unemployment, as any part of the United Kingdom.

Sir Patrick Mayhew: My hon. Friend had a distinguished career as a Minister in Northern Ireland and knows a great deal about that sort of thing. An enormous amount of work has been done. Coming as I do from the underprivileged south-east of England, I envy the people of Northern Ireland for many of their roads, although I realise that much more needs to be done. All people who speak about terrorism should remember that the ordinary people of Northern Ireland suffer from the crimes committed by the terrorists, who will not succeed and have no prospect of achieving the political aim of the IRA or of any other terrorist organisation. One and all, they take it out on the people of Northern Ireland.

Mr. McNamara: The Secretary of State will recall that the Northern Ireland Economic Council recommended that an extensive and independent review be undertaken to evaluate the overall impact of inward investment. He has said that he has taken on board some of the points made by the council. Can he say whether he will have such an independent review?

Sir Patrick Mayhew: Several months ago my hon. Friend who has responsibility for the economy instituted a review by the IDB's chairman and the permanent secretary of the Department of Economic Development on IDB's promotion activity. The review has been completed and the recommended changes are being discussed. We want to get on and we do not want too many reviews. We want to consider the changes recommended and see what we can do to get on with it.

Tourism

Mr. Nigel Evans: To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what measures he is taking to promote tourism in Northern Ireland.

Mr. Fabricant: To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what measures he is taking to promote tourism in Londonderry.

Mr. Atkins: Following a review of tourism in 1989 and the introduction of new tourism legislation in April this year, the Northern Ireland tourist board has been reorganised and resourced to take forward the promotion, marketing and development of tourism throughout Northern Ireland. In addition, district councils are being encouraged to develop tourist amenities in their areas. My overall aim is to maximise the contribution that tourism makes to the Northern Ireland economy and this, of course, includes Londonderry.

Mr. Evans: I welcome my hon. Friend's response to that question about tourism and to earlier questions on the subject asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Mr. Duncan). Does the Minister agree that if we are to encourage more tourists to the Province, we must give high-quality training to personnel concerned with tourism?

Mr. Atkins: My hon. Friend is right, because unless good-quality service is given to those who come to Northern Ireland, they will not come again. The crucial factor is that those who come to the Pronvince and see its beauties, however they perceive them, know that they must come again. The quality of service provided by properly trained staff at all levels is fundamental.

Mr. Fabricant: Will my hon. Friend join me in paying tribute to people from all the communities in Londonderry for their hard work in regenerating the centre of that city and making it a tourist attraction? Will he also join me in paying tribute to the people of Helen's Bay, Portrush, Newcastle and all parts of Northern Ireland, and all the beautiful places that I know exist there, because I have visited them and hope to visit them again?

Mr. Atkins: I can say without equivocation that if my hon. Friend returns again with as many friends as he cares to bring, he will be extremely welcome. A special plaudit is due to the citizens of Derry for all that they have achieved in recent months and years in providing a tourism attraction. I think particularly of the Tower museum and the craft village that has been created, largely as a result of the work done by the council, by Paddy Doherty of the inner city trust and, above all, by the hon. Member for Foyle (Mr. Hume), who has done an enormous amount to help in that respect.

Mr. Hume: Does the Minister agree that good communications, particularly air travel, are essential? Will he ensure that airport facilities in the north-west are brought up to the standard that we in that area want, so helping tourism to increase?

Mr. Atkins: I am tempted to say watch this air space. I agree entirely with the hon. Gentleman.

Mr. William Ross: Does the Minister agree that if we are to improve the standards of hotel and catering establishments, we should make available to the catering college at Portrush the maximum support it requires to produce the proper quality of staff? Does he further agree that among the glories of tourism in Northern Ireland are the wonderful beaches along the north coast? Will he


ensure that the raw sewage that is at present pouring across some of them is properly dealt with before it goes into the sea?

Mr. Atkins: I recently visited the catering college in Portrush and was impressed with the quality of meal that I was given and the work that I saw being done. The attractions of Portrush, Portstewart and other places, not least the golf course and Bushmill's distillery, are all contributory factors to the attractions offered to tourists by that part of Northern Ireland. I shall do all I can to help in that respect. I shall investigate the point that the hon. Gentleman raised about sewage.

Community Care

Mrs. Fyfe: To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what is the estimated amount of money allocated for the introduction of the community care programme in April 1993 in Northern Ireland; and if he will make a statement.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Mr. Jeremy Hanley): My noble Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State announced on 19 November 1992 that the funds to be transferred from social security to the health and personal social services in Northern Ireland to support the changes in the community care arrangements from April 1993 will amount to £24·63 million in 1993–94, rising to £65·28 million in 1994–95 and to £100·33 million in 1995–96. Any additional funds secured in the public expenditure round will be announced at the conclusion of the survey.

Mrs. Fyfe: Does the Minister know that there are about 201,000 disabled people in Northern Ireland and that that represents a prevalence rate of 174 per thousand, which is a higher average than any other region in Britain and 22 per cent. worse than the British average? In allocating funds for the community care programme, will he therefore take account of the high prevalence of disabilities in Northern Ireland and allocate the full amount necessary?

Mr. Hanley: I am grateful for the hon. Lady's statistics. She is right to say that we have many problems in Northern Ireland, a great number of which are caused by the health, deprivation and problems that exist in that area. The amounts of money that have been allocated take that into account and a higher proportion is given per person for those purposes than in Great Britain. I am grateful for the hon. Lady's interest.

Rev. Martin Smyth: I welcome the care that has been given towards community provision in Northern Ireland and the sums that are being and have been allocated. However, is the Minister satisfied that, in the allocation of those funds, independent homes such as Lakeside, in my constituency, and others will not be jeopardised because of the possible failure to have full accommodation to give them the opportunity to provide a high standard of service?

Mr. Hanley: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. Indeed, the home that he mentions gives great service to the community. In Northern Ireland, the care of each individual will be very carefully assessed, and the outcome

of the individual assessments will dictate the nature, level and locality of the services to be provided. The private sector will be essential in helping to provide those services.

Oral Answers to Questions — PRIME MINISTER

Engagements

Mr. Hendry: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Thursday 26 November.

The Prime Minister (Mr. John Major): This morning I presided at a meeting of the Cabinet and had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in the House, I shall be having further meetings later today.

Mr. Hendry: Has my right hon. Friend seen the report in yesterday's Financial Times on Derbyshire, which highlights the growth of jobs, prosperity and confidence in that county and beyond as a direct result of Toyota's decision to manufacture cars in this country? Is that not the clearest possible evidence of the success of the Government's strategy to make Britain the best place for international companies to invest? Is not that in the sharpest possible contrast to the position across the channel, where yesterday's vote on GATT shows that the French claim to be good European citizens is a total sham?

The Prime Minister: I greatly welcome the large investment by Toyota in Burnaston, together with that by other Japanese car manufacturers in recent years. Over that period their total planned investment in the United Kingdom is now nearly £2 billion and will create something in excess of 10,000 jobs. Clearly, that is extremely welcome news for this country. We are a very attractive area for foreign investment and I intend to keep it that way with low inflation, low taxation and no social charter.

Mr. John Smith: In view of the evident public concern, will the Prime Minister tell the House whether he has had discussions with Her Majesty the Queen about the issues of taxation and the civil list payments?

The Prime Minister: Let me say first to the right hon. and learned Gentleman that I believe that affection and respect for the monarchy are very wide and very deep across all sections of the nation. On the particular point that he raises, the sovereign is not liable in law to pay tax on her personal income and does not at present do so. But Her Majesty, some months ago—before the summer recess —indicated to me that she wished consideration to be given to changing that arrangement. She asked me then to consider the basis on which she might voluntarily pay tax and further suggested that she might take responsibility for certain payments under the current civil list arrangements. The House will be keen to know that the Prince of Wales has made a similar request in regard to the Duchy of Cornwall. Discussions are continuing between the Treasury, the Inland Revenue and the royal household. When they are completed I shall make a full statement to the House.

Mr. Smith: I am sure that the whole House will welcome the fact that consideration of those questions has


been initiated. When does the Prime Minister expect to be able to make that full statement to the House, and what has the Queen suggested by way of changes in the civil list?

The Prime Minister: I cannot be precise about when I can make a statement, but I would expect to be able to make one early in the new year. I also expect that the new arrangements will be able to come into effect for the next tax year. On the second part of the right hon. and learned Gentleman's question about the civil list, the Queen has asked me to consider arrangements under which she would reimburse the Consolidated Fund for the cost of annuities paid to all members of the royal family, except the Queen Mother and the Duke of Edinburgh.

Mr. Clappison: Will my right hon. Friend join me in welcoming today's encouraging news about American economic growth? Does he further agree that any consequent growth in world trade would be good for British trade, and that British industry is now well placed, with low inflation and low interest rates, to take advantage of world economic growth?

The Prime Minister: I agree wholeheartedly with my hon. Friend. It is clearly good news to see that the American economy begins to grow again. That will be good news, not just for the United States, but for the rest of the world trading community. It means that British companies and British business have a great opportunity. We have low inflation, the lowest interest rates in the European Community, an extremely competitive exchange rate and a single market of 340 million people on our doorstep. Now that the prospect of a world trade war has been averted, the circumstances are coming together that provide better opportunities for British business than we have known for some time.

Mr. Ashdown: What words has the Prime Minister to say to his fellow citizens of all political colours who, this afternoon, will discover that their councils are to sack teachers, close schools, shut down social services and still levy a council tax that is higher by far than anything that his Ministers promised during the last election?

The Prime Minister: I suggest that the right hon. Gentleman should wait for the statement by my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment in a few moments' time. The right hon. Gentleman's allegations have a familiar ring. We seem to have heard them from him and his colleagues year after year, yet they have never yet become fact.

Mr. Waller: Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is vital for all European nations to support with one voice the general agreement on tariffs and trade? Does he further agree that if any one European nation were to jeopardise the implementation of that agreement, it would go against the interests not only of Britain and its European partners, but of international trade generally?

The Prime Minister: I do agree with my hon. Friend on that. The agreement between the Community and the United States is a good one for the entire Community and the entire world trading community. It would, of course, be desirable for all member states to agree as speedily as possible. I know that there are difficulties in France, but I am sure that when France has examined every aspect of the deal, which has not yet been concluded and has to be concluded in Geneva, it, too, will realise that liberalisation

of trade, services and manufactures is a very valuable prize for the French economy, as well as for the economies of every other industrial nation in the world.

Mr. Ieuan Wyn Jones: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Thursday 26 November.

The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave some moments ago.

Mr. Jones: How can the Prime Minister justify a system whereby unelected and unaccountable card-carrying Conservatives are appointed to run Wales by quango? Does not that drive a stake through the heart of the democratic process? When will such political nepotism stop?

The Prime Minister: The heart of the political process of Wales is here in the House of Commons, with the answerability of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State.

Mr. Peter Bottomley: May I put it to my right hon. Friend that both the question by the Leader of the Opposition and my right hon. Friend's answer will be welcomed by people across the country and across the political spectrum? Would it be possible to suggest that senior members of the Privy Council should try to keep in contact with each other so that the country can respond to a lead from the royal household and from the leaders of the political parties?

The Prime Minister: As I indicated to the House a few moments ago, I hope that we shall be able to conclude the arrangements before too long, and I hope then to be able to respond to the House. I think that the announcement that I have made today and the fuller announcement that I shall be able to make, I hope, early in the new year will be widely welcomed, both in the House and beyond it.

Mr. Sheldon: While I welcome the announcement by the Prime Minister, will he now consider the setting up of a Select Committee on the civil list, as was done in 1972? It is about time, after 20 years, that we considered these matters dispassionately and carefully and came to a sensible conclusion.

The Prime Minister: I know that the right hon. Gentleman has expressed that view, but I see no need for such a special Select Committee. The House approved the present civil list arrangements in 1990 to run for 10 years. The additional reimbursements which Her Majesty has asked me to consider will reduce the net cost to the Exchequer. I made the point that the arrangements run for a full 10 years. The actual increase is, of course, 6 per cent. because of assumed savings of 1·5 per cent. If there is a surplus at the end of the period, it will, of course, be taken into account in setting future civil list payments.

Mr. Pickles: Does my right hon. Friend agree with me that, following the autumn statement, the best way to give a boost to British industry is to start a programme of removing regulation from business? Does he further agree that business currently faces a triple assault from the town hall, Whitehall and Brussels?

The Prime Minister: I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. The autumn statement has set out the right framework for growth and we need to be sure that that


growth is not shackled by red tape, whether it comes from Whitehall, county hall, town hall or the European Community. I announced some time ago that I had asked my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade to lead a new blitz on the regulatory sausage machine from wherever those regulations may come. We intend to cut all unnecessary rules and requirements that dull enterprise and innovation. I hope that before too long British business men will be able to warm their hands at a new bonfire of controls.

Mr. Darling: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Thursday 26 November.

The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply that I gave some moments ago.

Mr. Darling: How can the Prime Minister justify a situation in which nurses and teachers will this year get no wage increase and possibly lose their jobs, when, at the same time, the chairmen of the privatised water industries are digging their faces into the public trough yet again and are asking, and will get, increases of between 30 and 50 per cent? What does the Prime Minister intend to do about it?

The Prime Minister: Against the advice of the Government yesterday—if I may borrow the hon. Gentleman's phrase—around 90 Labour Members dug their noses in the trough.

Mr. Peter Robinson: Will the Prime Minister —[Interruption.]

Madam Speaker: Order. Hon. Members must resume their seats.

Mr. Peter Robinson: Will the Prime Minister recite for the House the moral, political and legal principles that distinguish the two cases of informers, the case of Brian Nelson and that of the informer known as "Michael", who featured in a BBC television programme? Can the Prime Minister explain to the House and to the country why one of the two is at present serving a 10-year sentence and the other has left the country with his pockets stuffed with tens of thousands of pounds, with a new life made for him in some other area of the United Kingdom?

The Prime Minister: I understand that the Royal Ulster Constabulary is investigating the programme to which the hon. Gentleman refers and that a report will be submitted to the Director of Public Prosecutions. The principle of employing participating informants to assist the police in the prevention of crime is well established in this country and in other democratic societies. As I believe the hon. Gentleman well understands, lives would be lost in Northern Ireland if the security forces were unable to receive information from informants. On his other point, there is no immunity from prosecution for informants who commit crime and the security forces are at all times subject to the rule of law.

Ms. Hoey: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Thursday 26 November.

The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Lady to the reply that I gave some moments ago.

Ms. Hoey: The Prime Minister will know that nearly a quarter of a million people have signed a petition demanding that St. Thomas's hospital should stay open on its present site. I have taken the liberty of putting in his name, because it is his local hospital. I wonder whether he will sign it and ensure that his local hospital, a hospital crucial to central London, is kept open.

The Prime Minister: As the hon. Lady knows, it is widely accepted that substantial changes in London will be necessary to provide the right health care in future. However, there will be very full consultation before any decisions are taken on the Tomlinson report. My hon. Friend the Minister for Health has already visited St. Thomas's to listen to views on the proposals. We shall consider them, examine the report and announce our conclusions in the new year.

Lady Olga Maitland: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Thursday 26 November.

The Prime Minister: I refer my hon. Friend to the answer I gave some moments ago.

Lady Olga Maitland: Does my right hon. Friend welcome the announcement yesterday by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster that £.1·5 billion-worth of Whitehall in-house functions will be market tested? Does he agree that the civil service must subject itself to the same disciplines of efficiency and value for money as the private sector?

The Prime Minister: The initiative on market testing announced by my right hon. Friend yesterday is a giant step forward in bringing new thinking and new skills to the service of the public, and in getting work done that needs to be done better and with better value for money than ever before. I believe that we can be proud of the work done by many millions of public servants. That does not mean that it cannot be done better. That is what market testing is about, and it is why we support it and why the Opposition, who so often put the convenience of trade unions before that of the public, oppose it and will no doubt continue to oppose it.

Madam Speaker: Order. Time's up. We now come to business questions—

Mr. Barry Porter: On a point of order Madam Speaker—

Madam Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman knows well enough that I take points of order at the end of all the statements. I regret that he will have to wait.

Business of the House

Mrs. Margaret Beckett: Will the Leader of the House tell us the business for next week?

The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Tony Newton): The business for next week will be as follows:
MONDAY 30 NOVEMBER—Second Reading of the Social Security Bill.
TUESDAY I DECEMBER and WEDNESDAY 2 DECEMBER —Progress in Committee on the European Communities (Amendment) Bill
THURSDAY 3 DECEMBER—Second Reading of the Judicial Pensions and Retirement Bill [Lords]
FRIDAY 4 DECEMBER—Private Members' motions 
MONDAY 7 DECEMBER—Committee and remaining stages of the Social Security Bill.
The House will also wish to know that European Standing Committee B will meet on Wednesday 2 December at 10.30 am to consider European Community document No. 4204/89, relating to VAT: special arrangements for second-hand goods, works of art, antiques and collectors' items.
I come now to the bit that everyone has been waiting for. The House will wish to know that, subject to the progress of business, it will be proposed that the House should rise for the Christmas Adjournment on Thursday 17 December until Monday 11 January.
It may also be of assistance to the House to know that, even more subject to the progress of business, it will be proposed that the House should rise for the Easter Adjournment on Friday 2 April until Wednesday 14 April.

[Wednesday 2 December
European Standing Committee B
Relevant European Community Document
4204/89 Value Added Tax
Relevant Report of the European Legislation Committee HC 79-viii (1992–93)]

Mrs. Beckett: I thank the Leader of the House for his statement—especially for having responded to the concern expressed on both sides of the House and for having given us early notice of the dates for the Easter recess. I know that all hon. Members will appreciate that help with their planning. That is the good news.
There is, however, considerable resentment in the House at the scheduling of the statement this afternoon on the revenue support grant, after a statement on Sunday trading for which some other time could surely have been found. Hon. Members on both sides are anxious to question the Secretary of State for the Environment on issues of local taxation, about which there is anxiety. I hope that satisfactory arrangements have been made for our Scottish and Welsh colleagues to pursue issues of local taxation pertaining to Scotland and Wales.
I press the Leader of the House to find time for a debate in Government time on the consequences of privatisation, before any further such moves. Does he recognise that strong concerns about the consequences of electricity privatisation for British Coal are exacerbating fears for the future of that industry? Recent reports from the bidders

that double fares or the closure of 5 per cent. of the routes on Network SouthEast might follow privatisation are also giving great cause for anxiety, and they highlight the need for a full debate on the consequences of past privatisation well before we embark on further such risky moves.
Having sought a debate in Government time, I also ask the Leader of the House for an assurance that there will be a further Opposition day in the near future.

Mr. Newton: I thank the hon. Lady for her generous remarks about the recess dates. I should have made it clear that, because Easter is rather late next year, the Easter Adjournment is largely before rather than after Easter, as has happened on previous occasions.
I note what the hon. Lady says about the revenue support grant statement and the other statement which are to be made shortly. The Sunday trading statement was originally to have been made on Monday, but it was thought that that might be inconvenient to some Opposition Members as it was also their Supply day. However, we felt it right to make the statement this week.
There will not be oral statements by the Secretary of State for Scotland or for Wales today, but the Secretary of State for Scotland will be making an oral statement next week and the Secretary of State for Wales will be making one towards the middle of next month.

Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours: In the House?

Mr. Newton: Yes, oral statements—by which I mean statements from where I am standing now, when the hon. Gentleman will have every opportunity to look the Minister straight in the eye and ask direct questions.
Those statements will not be precisely in every detail parallel with the one today because the various parts of the United Kingdom operate slightly differently, but there will be oral statements on local government finance in Scotland and Wales within the next couple of weeks or so.
I cannot promise a debate specifically on privatisation between now and Christmas, but the hon. Lady will be aware that my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade has undertaken to have debates on coal, to mention one of the matters to which the hon. Lady referred, in the light of his White Paper in the new year. The hon. Lady will well know also that we expect to bring the rail privatisation Bill before the House in due course, which will give opportunities on that as well.
I note the hon. Lady's request about Opposition time. I am obviously anxious to be helpful, but I cannot at this moment make a commitment for one between now and Christmas.

Mr. Barry Porter: My right hon. Friend will no doubt have noted during Northern Ireland questions that we never reached question 11 on security. The hon. Member for Belfast, West (Dr. Hendron) tried to raise the matter in a way in which I would not have done and was told that the appropriate question would be reached in due course, but it never was.
Bearing in mind the number of murders that are taking place in Northern Ireland, may we have a debate in the House before Christmas to discuss, in particular, the disgraceful and appalling article published in The Guardian last Mondy which purported to portray the IRA as respectable soldiers who are jolly sorry that they kill people and who are kind to their children, and that sort of


thing? Such a debate would be much more important than one on the privatisation of the railways and should be given greater priority.

Mr. Newton: I understand that my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland touched on that point at one stage during Northern Ireland questions, but I note my hon. Friend's request, which was an ingenious effort during business questions to make a point intended for Irish questions.

Mr. Archy Kirkwood: I remind the Leader of the House of his responsibility to allow the Scottish Grand Committee up to six matter days in the course of any one year. The right hon. Gentleman may know that there has been an effective Scottish Trades Union Council lobby of the House on constitutional and job issues which are of the first significance north of the border. I hope that, if the right hon. Gentleman cannot find time to allocate one day next week, he will do so before Christmas.
May we have an early debate on the common fisheries policy regime which will apply to the inshore fleet in 1993?

Mr. Newton: As to the hon. Gentleman's first point, I will of course consider his suggestion. As to his second, I indicated in one or two answers to previous business questions that I hope to provide time for a fisheries debate between now and Christmas.

Mr. Phillip Oppenheim: May the House debate job creation, and discuss an interesting new wheeze discovered by friends of the Leader of the Opposition, who apparently create jobs for their friends in Monklands by giving them coloured forms? Is that what Labour means by their new agenda? It sounds suspiciously like the old one to me.

Mr. Newton: I note my hon. Friend's remarks, but that is more a question for the Leader of the Opposition than for me—and I believe that the whole House would be interested to hear the comments of the right hon. and learned Member for Monklands, East (Mr. Smith).

Mr. Ken Maginnis: Insofar as there is increasing contravention of broadcasting directives prohibiting the availability of the air waves to those espousing the causes of terrorist organisations, will it be possible to find time to allow the Secretary of State for National Heritage to come to the House to tell us how those directives can be made more effective, both in letter and in law?
Yesterday, a Sinn Fein councillor who did not see a shooting incident was able to appear on television and spew out his vicious and malicious propaganda to the disadvantage of our hard-pressed security services. Will the Leader of the House try to find time in the very near future to allow the Secretary of State to explain how that can be put right?

Mr. Newton: Perhaps I can help the hon. Gentleman, because my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for National Heritage is due to answer questions within the span of the business statement that I just made—that is, on Monday 7 December. In any case, I will draw my right hon. Friend's attention to the hon. Gentleman's point.

Mr. Patrick Cormack: So that the House can discuss GATT, the Balkans, and all the

other matters that will preoccupy the Edinburgh summit, can a debate on foreign affairs be placed on the agenda of the House before the Christmas recess?

Mr. Newton: I cannot promise a general debate on foreign affairs in quite that form, but I make the point —as I did to the hon. Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone (Mr. Maginnis)—that my right hon. Friends the President of the Board of Trade and the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food are due to answer questions next week, so there should be an opportunity to raise the question of GATT. In view of my hon. Friend's well-known interest in such matters, I draw his attention to the opportunities that will arise perhaps on the Consolidated Fund and certainly on the debate on the Christmas Adjournment motion.

Mr. Mark Fisher: Will the right hon. Gentleman ask the President of the Board of Trade to make a statement to the House about the condition of the 10 pits marked for closure? When the President last spoke to the House on that subject, he gave an assurance that the fabric of those pits—the faces and roadways-—would be kept viable so that the pits could be reopened, if that were the will of the House. All the evidence of weekly inspections is that those faces a re coverging and deteriorating fast.
Unless the President makes a statement and requires British Coal to inform him on a weekly basis about what is happening to those faces, people will not know. Several of my hon. Friends and I have been seeking a meeting with the President of the Board of Trade and are aghast that he has so far refused personally to meet us. That shows an unusual and, I believe, unprecedented lack of courtesy by a Minister in relation to such a pressing issue.

Mr. Newton: As I mentioned in response to a previous question, my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade will answer questions in the House next Wednesday. Meanwhile, I fall back on the formula of undertaking to convey to my right hon. Friend the strength of feeling that the hon. Gentleman has expressed.

Mr. Hugh Dykes: I am sure that the House is grateful to know the dates of the Easter as well as the Christmas recess, but I hope that that does not ominously mean that the Bill to ratify the Maastricht treaty will drag on that long in Committee on the Floor of the House. I have no wish to stifle debate, but in view of the will of the House on Second Reading, with a one-page Bill of only three to four clauses, surely even the Chair will have to rule out of order most of the amendments tabled so far. Can my right hon. Friend give an assurance that the Bill will be expedited so that ours will not be the last country to ratify the treaty?

Mr. Newton: My hon. Friend's interest in such matters is, to say the least, well known. Let me give him two assurances. First, my announcement of the Easter recess dates was prompted by nothing more than my desire to please the House, in my familiar fashion; it did not constitute a comment on the European Communities (Amendment) Bill. Secondly, the Government's position on that Bill remains the same: it is an important measure, and the House must be given proper time to discuss it.

Mr. Terry Lewis: Does the Lord President share my grief and anger about the rape of a 17-year-old


girl in Hillingdon by a man who, it was claimed in court, was moved to commit that heinous crime by the pornographic telephone service? Is it not about time that the Lord President and his right hon. Friends took account of the seriousness of the situation? I have been trying to do something about it for seven years. How much longer must we wait, and how many more youngsters must be terrorised in the same way because an Act of Parliament has allowed British Telecom to run such lines?
I cannot understand how Conservative Members can pray before each sitting of the House knowing that an Act that they passed in 1984 has resulted in so much agony and trouble for ordinary people. When will we be able to debate the matter, and when will the law be changed?

Mr. Newton: It is to the hon. Gentleman's credit that he has taken an interest in such matters for a long time. No one would wish to express anything other than grave concern about the case that he has described. I shall ensure that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for National Heritage is made aware of what he has said, and it is possible that he will be able to raise the matter with my right hon. Friend at National Heritage questions in 10 days' time.

Mr. Richard Shepherd: My right hon. Friend will recall that, on 19 October, the Foreign Office wrote to my right hon. Friend the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee confirming that a document in straightforward English explaining the Government's interpretation of the Maastricht Bill would be made available to the House. According to the Foreign Office, the document would be made available at the earliest possible opportunity, but certainly before the recommencement of debate on the Bill. That can now be done only today or on Monday. If the Foreign Office pledge is not honoured, will my right hon. Friend make a business statement on Monday, postponing the Bill's Committee stage until we have seen the document?

Mr. Newton: I shall not give my hon. Friend the immediate undertaking that he seeks. I shall, however, give him an immediate undertaking to look into the point that he has raised as soon as business questions are over.

Mrs. Margaret Ewing: May I revert to the distressing and deeply worrying position of the fishing industry? Will the right hon. Gentleman undertake not only to confer with the relevant Ministers in both the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and the Scottish Office about the possibility of a debate before Christmas, but to write to interested Members on the subject?
Last week, during a sitting of Standing Committee A, it was clearly intimated that no such debate would take place before Christmas. In the light of the failure of the fisheries Minister to report back to the House following Monday's meeting in Brussels, will the Leader of the House ensure that a statement is made next week? Hundreds of our constituents now face not only a bleak December, but bankruptcy and a loss of livelihood.

Mr. Newton: I note what the hon. Lady has said. As she will know, her hon. Friend the Member for Banff and Buchan (Mr. Salmond)—who evidently could not be present for business questions—has secured for next week

an Adjournment debate on the North sea haddock quota. Obviously, that will cover some of the issues raised by the hon. Lady.

Mrs. Edwina Currie: May we give three cheers for the fact that, after six months, the Maastricht Bill is at last going into Committee? As it will take many hours and many weeks, will my right hon. Friend consider telling us on which days it will be discussed so that hon. Members can make their plans? No doubt the information is already available to Ministers.
Will my right hon. Friend also take on board the point that was hinted at by my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd)—that the Bill could be scuppered by points of order, if we are not careful? Those of us who want to support the Government and get the Bill through would like enough time for full discussion of all the issues, without any trouble.

Mr. Newton: I sense that the latter part of my hon. Friend's remarks were directed elsewhere than at myself, because I am not seeking to cause, or acquiesce in, the sort of trouble that she seems to have in mind.
On my hon. Friend's first point, as I hope I have made clear in the few months that I have been doing this job, I am always anxious to give the House as much notice as I can of business or of recess dates, but I cannot promise to give in advance all the dates that my hon. Friend would like.

Mr. Kevin Barron: Did the Lord President hear on the radio this morning that the Government are about to abolish the independent living allowance, which has brought a better quality of life to many severely disabled people in recent years? Will he find out why the House has not been told, and what is likely to replace the fund? May we have a statement next week so that hon. Members may be aware of what is happening?

Mr. Newton: The hon. Gentleman is a little behind the time. This is a matter in which I am interested, and he will find that a question was answered earlier this week setting out the Government's plans, on which, as is well known, we have been working for some time, for a successor body to the independent living fund. The Government intend to legislate in the present Session to provide for the successor body.

Mr. Roger Knapman: The House will welcome the return of the European Communities (Amendment) Bill to the Floor of the House—none more so, I suspect, than Madam Speaker. What will be the position if the exchange rate mechanism falls apart? Will we continue with amendments relating to the mechanism?

Mr. Newton: The question whether amendments are proceeded with will depend, first, on the selection of the Chairman of Ways and Means—that is not a matter for me—and the wishes of hon. Members who have tabled them. On the underlying issue, it seems that what has happened with the exchange rate mechanism has very much confirmed almost everything that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has been saying for a long time.

Mr. Thomas Graham: I demand that the Leader of the House arranges for the Secretary of State for Scotland to make a statement on this letter sent direct to my constituents, usurping my democratic role as an elected Member by asking my


constituents to contact him if they have problems of a national or local nature. Surely that is a breach of may repesentation and role in the house.

Mr. Newton: I have not had the advantage of seeing the missive to which the hon. Gentleman refers, but I shall bring his remarks to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State as soon as I can.

Mr. Bob Dunn: May we have a day's debate on general education matters, not least the publication of league tables showing school results? My right hon. Friend will know that that is important to me and my constituents. A debate would give us a chance to welcome the change in Labour policy, because the hon. Member for Dewsbury (Mrs. Taylor) has now said that the Labour party would publish league tables.

Mr. Newton: As I think I said last week, I am increasingly tempted to find time for a debate to allow the Opposition to explain why they opposed the policy for so long, even if there has now been a welcome shift of view. It is not the first time, of course, that there has been a welcome shift by Labour Members to policies that we espouse but which they initially opposed. Despite that temptation, I cannot undertake to provide time for a further debate on education in the immediate future.

Mr. Joe Ashton: Will the Minister reconsider his decision about the Easter recess? Is he aware that, despite what the Jopling report said, he has fixed dates when children will be at school but the House will be on holiday? The week after, children will be on holiday and we shall be back here. In the interests of family unity, will he reconsider the dates to ensure that they coincide with school holidays?

Mr. Newton: If ever there was an example of how difficult it is to please all the people all the time, even though I have announced a recess date so far in advance, that must be it. I cannot give quite the undertaking which the hon. Gentleman seeks, but I shall certainly consider what he has said.

Mr. Peter Viggers: Will my right hon. Friend find time soon for a debate on a business issue which has become serious—the insurance of premises on the mainland of the United Kingdom in the wake of IRA bombings? Is he aware that the withdrawal of reinsurance arrangements means that businesses may remain uncovered in the United Kingdom, which not only poses a threat to the insurance industry—in which I declare an interest, through my membership of Lloyd's—but is a serious problem when we try to attract business to the United Kingdom? I yield to no one in my understanding of the publicity angle, but, as the Financial Times has said, what I suggest does not represent acquiescence to terrorism; it is simply carrying on the fight against terrorism by different means.

Mr. Newton: If I understand my hon. Friend's question aright, this seems to be a matter for the President of the Board of Trade, who will be here next week to answer questions. I shall bring it to his attention.

Mr. Dennis Skinner: Will the Leader of the House review his answer to a question about a debate on coal privatisation, in view of the odd set of circumstances now prevailing? British Coal wants a small industry

because British Coal is part and parcel of a takeover bid. It wants a nice little captive rigged market, with only 30 million tonnes worth of coal contracts at the power stations. It is important that we should have a debate before the White Paper is published so that we can expose the murky deal going on with Mr. Neil Clarke and his gang. They are obviously intent on shaping the market to suit themselves rather than the miners. That is why we should have a debate before Christmas.

Mr. Newton: I do not believe that I referred to a debate specifically on coal rivatisation—certainly I did not intend to. I was referring to the whole range of issues that will arise from the review by my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade and the White Paper which he has promised. The hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) is making a point which I suspect he may seek to develop at that time. I cannot promise him a debate in the near future.

Mr. Anthony Coombs: May I remind my right hon. Friend that an amendment has been tabled to early-day motion 908?
[That this House welcomes the resumption on 28th October in New York of direct negotiations between the leaders of the two communities in Cyprus, with a view to searching for a lasting and mutually acceptable solution to the Cyprus question; is heartened by the recent references in this House by a Foreign and Commonwealth Office Minister to the constructive aproaches of the two leaders taking part in the negotiations; notes the United Nations Security Council Resolution which envisages a freely negotiated and mutually acceptable settlement to the Cyprus question; and welcomes the statement from another Minister of State that the Greek Cypriots must agree to genuine power sharing that accepts Turkish Cypriots as a politically equal community.]
The amendment expresses the regret of the House at the breakdown of the talks on the reunification of Cyprus in New York a few weeks ago. In a report this week the Secretary-General of the United Nations attributes that breakdown to the intransigence and lack of political will of the Turkish Cypriot community.
Will the Government make a statement telling us what they, as President of the Community, can do to bring about a resumption of the talks? Will they also tell us what Suleyman Demirel, the Turkish Prime Minister, said on the subject when he visited London recently?

Mr. Newton: I cannot undertake that the Foreign Secretary will make a statement, but I assure my hon. Friend that the Foreign Secretary and the Government as a whole will continue to give every support to the efforts of the United Nations Secretary-General to resolve the Cyprus dispute.

Mr. Campbell-Savours: Members' interests.

Mr. Newton: The hon. Gentleman will know, and I hope that he will be pleased, that the usual channels finally managed to appoint the Select Committee last Friday. That paves the way to the publication of the new register. which I hope will take place at an early stage—although that is a matter for the Committee. It also enables me to consider some of the other issues in which the hon. Gentleman is interested.

Mr. David Tredinnick: My right hon. Friend is to be sincerely congratulated on his decision to


announce the Easter recess—for the sake not only of Members but of their families. He will be aware that this decision relates to an important part of the report of my right hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Mr. Jopling), which calls for reform of the hours of the House. Can my right hon. Friend make further progress on the reforms proposed in the Jopling report? Is he aware that, of the almost 1,000 motions on the Order Paper, early-day motion 9, which calls for those reforms, bears the second highest number of Members' signatures?
[That this House welcomes the Report of the Select Committee on the Sittings of the House, HC20, Session 1991–92, which considered 'whether the public and private business of the House might be conducted more effectively by making changes to the order and timing of business, the hours of sitting and the arrangement of the parliamentary year'; notes the recommendations of the report and the debate on 2nd March 1992; and urges the Government to provide time to discuss further and consider substantive motions and vote on the recommendations of the report at the earliest opportunity.]
Two hundred and fifteen Members have signed that motion, which represents one third of the Members of the House of Commons.

Mr. Newton: I am very much aware of the interest shown in these matters by my hon. Friend and by my right hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Mr. Jopling). As I said, I hope that we shall be able to make further progress before too long following discussion through the usual channels. Apart from the relatively early announcement of recess dates today, the pattern of business in the House on Thursdays over the past few weeks and the hours at which the House has risen show that quite a lot of progress has been made even within the existing rules.

Mr. Barry Jones: Is it possible to have a full day's debate on Britain's growing housing crisis? There is evidence in the surgeries of hon. Members of all parties of great distress in housing. Does the Leader of the House know that on Tuesday the Churches National Housing Coalition hopes to lobby the House? It has an all-party approach and aims to emphasise the seriousness of the housing crisis. Would the right hon. Gentleman like to meet the Archbishop of Wales, for example, on Tuesday?

Mr. Newton: I am not sure that I can undertake to meet the Archbishop of Wales about housing matters on Tuesday, much as I would, in some respects, wish to be able to do so. Nor can I promise the debate that the hon. Gentleman seeks. In the past couple of weeks, notably in the autumn statement, the Government have announced a number of measures that will have an important and advantageous effect on certain housing problems.

Mr. John Butcher: May we have a debate on today's welcome statement that Treasury economic forecasting is to be contracted out? Is my right hon. Friend aware, for example, that in a league table of forcasters' effectiveness, the Treasury came 19th, whereas the Liverpool Six had four of its members in the top eight?

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Richard Ryder): indicated dissent.

Mr. Butcher: Could we not give the whole shebang to the Liverpool Six? We might then be able to steer the ship of state with all the hard data required to make appropriate decisions.

Mr. Newton: My right hon. Friend the Chief Whip claims that those are not accurate figures. Whether they are right or wrong, I cannot promise a debate. Indeed, I should be rash to do so until we see how the new arrangements perform.

Mr. Bob Cryer: Will the Leader of the House arrange for a statement next week on the difficulties being experienced in France and on the potential breakdown of the GATT talks? May we examine the possibility of an interim ban on the export of live animals for slaughter during this period? Many people would like the ban to be permanent in view of the variable standards of transport of live animals in other EC countries. In view of the potential dangers for animals, should not the Government consider the possibility of at least a temporary ban until the difficulties are removed?

Mr. Newton: As the hon. Gentleman knows, the Government have a long time vigorously sought to improve the welfare of animals including those being transported abroad. I will ensure that my right hon Friend the Minister of Agriculture Fisheries and Food is a aware of the hon. Gentleman's point.

Mr. Robert Adley: Does my right hon. Friend intend to introduce the paving coal and rail Bill in another place next week? Is the Bill to be split or do the Government intend to push ahead regardless of the timetable for the introduction of the White Paper on the future of the coal industry?
Will my right hon. Friend ponder the stark difference between the Green Paper issued by the Secretary of State for National Heritage on the future of the BBC, under which there is to be a six-month debate on the role, objectives, organisation and funding of that great organisation, and the way in which we are steaming ahead, if I may use that phrase, with the railway privatisation proposals without any serious debate on the possibilities and without alternative methods being considered?

Mr. Newton: My hon. Friend will be aware that the progress of Bills in another place is a matter for another place. I understand that it has been said there that the expectation is that progress will be made on the paving Bill in Committee next week. Knowing my hon. Friend's interest in these matters, I am sure that he is aware that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport said in a slightly different other place—on the "Today" programme—that he expected to introduce the railway privatisation Bill early next year.

Dr. Tony Wright: Now that we have cleared up the question of the Select Committee on Members' Interests, will the Leader of the House tell the House when he thinks the Select Committee on the Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration will be established? Given the statement on the citizens charter yesterday, and given the Government's interest in issues of complaint and redress in public services, is it not rather


strange that, seven months into a new Parliament, the instrument that the House has to exercise scrutiny in precisely that matter has still not been established?

Mr. Newton: I, too, would like that Select Committee to be established. No doubt the usual channels—whose representatives on both sides of the House are present—will make every effort to do their stuff, if I may use the vernacular, as they have done recently in respect of the Select Committee on Members' Interests.

Mr. Michael Fabricant (Mid-Staffordshire): On a point of order, Madam Speaker.

Madam Speaker: Order. I think that the hon. Gentleman's point of order may well be a point of frustration, but in any case I am afraid that he will have to wait until the end of the statements.

Sunday Trading

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Kenneth Clarke): With permission, I should like to make a statement on Sunday trading in England and Wales. My original intention was to come to the House once the judgment from the European Court was available but I now understand that, because of circumstances that have recently arisen at the Court, that is unlikely to be before January. I have therefore decided to let the House know how we propose to proceed.
The Government are determined to give Parliament the opportunity to settle the vexed question of the reform of the law on Sunday trading in England and Wales.
No body of opinion finds the existing law wholly satisfactory. Everyone—from sabbatarians to deregulators—is critical of some aspects of the Shops Act 1950. But there is a very wide spread of opinion about how it ought to be reformed. The House will wish to know how we intend eventually to ask Parliament to resolve the issue.
The question now is not whether there should be reforrn but what that reform should be. This is a matter upon which every Member of Parliament is likely to have his or her own views. Views cut across our usual party lines. It is the opinion of Parliament as a whole that must determine the issue. The Government would expect to give their supporters a free vote on the key issue of whether restrictions should apply to trading on Sunday and, if so, what they should be.
The Government will in due course invite Parliament to decide between the three main options: total deregulation; proposals put forward by the Shopping Hours Reform Council; and proposals put forward by the Keep Sunday Special Campaign.
Total deregulation would place the law in England and Wales on the same basis as the present law in Scotland. That gives complete freedom of choice and allows opening to be determined by commercial judgments of the wishes of the shopping public. To my constituents, I make no secret of the fact that that is my preferred option.
The Shopping Hours Reform Council proposes a quite different model, under which any small shop would be able to open at any time on a Sunday to sell anything that it chose to sell. Larger shops would be able to open only for a limited period of six hours. The council proposes a local authority registration scheme under which shops would inform the local authority of their intention to open on a Sunday.
The Keep Sunday Special Campaign put forward proposals that would in general prohibit trading on Sunday but exempt certain classes of shop—shops catering for recreation, emergencies, social gatherings and travel. Whether such a shop could open on a Sunday would be determined by what it sold. Whether some types of shops could open would depend on their annual turnover in a list of permitted goods. There would be a maximum floor size for some types of shop. Some shops wishing to open on a Sunday would have to register with their local authority, which would have the discretion to decide whether any shop should be permitted to open.
The Government have concluded that Parliament should fully debate all three options to see precisely what


each implies for shops, what they can sell, and what their customers can buy. The House should then decide which option is to be preferred.
We have already begun to work on a Bill that will provide a mechanism for Parliament to make that choice. I have today written to the Keep Sunday Special Campaign and the Shopping Hours Reform Council inviting them to work with the Government in formulating their proposals for a Bill. The Bill presented to the House will contain all three models as alternatives. One will be chosen by the House and that model will then go through the normal refinement process in Committee and on Report. The result at the end of the debates in both Houses will be the preferred legislative solution.
We shall publish before Second Reading an explanation of the practical effect of each set of proposals. We will aim to draft each model, in collaboration with the groups that I have named, with great care to make it easy to implement, readily enforceable, and as free from anomaly as possible.
The Bill will contain Government clauses to provide protection for existing shop workers from being compelled to work on a Sunday if they do not wish to do so. However, we must remember that a great many people would positively welcome the opportunity to work on a Sunday, and their freedom must be protected, too.

Mr. Dennis Skinner: Not in this House. Six weeks, holiday have been announced for this place.

Mr. Clarke: I agree with the hon. Gentleman. As far as I am aware, his offer to work on a Sunday does not feature in the Jopling report. We have important legislation in this Session which may alter the position. There are precedents, but that is where we are at present.
I cannot yet say when the House will be given the opportunity to settle the law on Sunday trading. Our proposals will need to await a judgment of the European Court of Justice. That court is considering several cases referred to it by some English courts, including the House of Lords, to establish whether our Sunday trading laws are compatible with the free trade articles of the treaty of Rome. The court will deliver its judgment soon.
It would be wrong to enact or seek to enact fresh legislation while we await that judgment. To do so would risk a new law, falling foul of Community law and therefore having to be replaced. But there is no need to delay the preparation of a Bill. I will be pressing ahead with that, seeking and expecting the co-operation of the Keep Sunday Special campaign and the Shopping Hours Reform Council so that, once we have the ECJ's judgment, we are well placed to take advantage of the earliest opportunity that can be found for legislation.
I have described a process which will enable Parliament to settle the issue on Sunday trading reform. I hope that we will be able to bring forward the legislative proposals without undue delay. I invite the House to endorse my proposals so that we can proceed, with the co-operation and assistance of the various interested parties, to draft the necessary Bill. I believe that that method of proceeding offers the welcome prospect of a conclusion to the uncertainty and anomalies of the present legal situation on the subject.

Mr. Tony Blair: I welcome the fact that the Secretary of State is introducing legislation on this issue and that there will be a free vote on it. Will he give an undertaking that the vote will be genuinely free and that the payroll vote will not be mobilised in favour of any one option or, indeed, any one issue within an option?
Does the Secretary of State agree that the challenge is to produce a lasting reform that ends both the present deregulation through anarchy and the anomalies of the existing law, which is clear and practical and commands public support, yet properly protects the rights of those who will have to work on a Sunday if others are to shop on a Sunday? Does he agree that that matter will be especially important since, once we have legislated, the legislation will need to be enforced? There will be a strong duty on the House to ensure that the proposals produced are capable of being enforced which the present legislation is not.
I suspect that we are about to be subjected to intense lobbying from groups of all persuasions. Will the Secretary of State ensure that the information and studies available to the Government are shared with Members of Parliament? Will he ensure that the information includes assessments of the impact on the local environment and quality of life of those who live close to the shops which will open on a Sunday? Will it also include an analysis of the current practice in Scotland, where Sunday trading is permitted, although in practice is somewhat circumscribed?
I come to the nub of the issue, certainly for the Opposition. The Secretary of State said that the legislation will contain the three main options canvassed publicly. At least two of the campaigners, the Keep Sunday Special Campaign and the Shopping Hours Reform Council, are heavily backed by employers. Will the Secretary of State ensure that the legislation contains specific provisions to protect existing employees who do not want to work on Sundays? All employees, both present and future, should be subject to the voluntary principle and entitled under law, or by agreement with employers, to the premium payments for such working to which many are now entitled.
Many hon. Members and many others outside the House believe that people should have greater freedom to shop on a Sunday provided that open on a Sunday for us does not mean exploited on a Sunday for those who work in the shops that serve us. Therefore, will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give an undertaking that all the options on employment protection will be in his Bill? Does he understand that it is hardly surprising that the Opposition are wary of the Government's promises on employment protection when they are abolishing that protection under the wages councils legislation for shopworkers and other groups?
If the Government are sensible in handling this issue, there will be a chance of achieving the necessary reform of Sunday trading in a way that is sensitive to those who are genuinely and rightly concerned to keep Sunday's special nature and allows the public greater choice to shop under the law, if they want to do so. Does the Home Secretary agree that sensible reform is surely long overdue?

Mr. Clarke: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his final words and for some of his other comments. I assure him that there will be a genuine free vote among Conservative Members. There may be some surprising


unanimity but I should be surprised if all hon. Members who usually form what is called the Government's payroll vote voted for the same option. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will make it clear that his party will permit a similar free vote. I trust that other Opposition parties will do the same.
I accept that enforcement of the legislation is extremely important. I hope that no one will vote against the Second Reading of a Bill which offers genuine choice. There is no clear scope for enforcing the Shops Act 1950, which has no friends left in the House or outside. The reason for asking outside groups to be involved at this stage in drafting the legislation is so that the skills of the parliamentary draftsmen can be brought to bear to ensure that what is drafted is in order and we do not become bogged down in technicalities. They will also ensure that the legislation is enforceable to the best of expert judgment.
We shall certainly place before the House all the research that we commission. However, I find that research does not make many people change their mind on any aspect of this problem. I shall seek to find an analysis of the position in Scotland—although I do not undertake to commission it—where there is regulation of hairdressers and barbers but not of any other trades. The position in Scotland has not led to widespread opening of all shops but to a settled situation which reflects the demands and wishes of people in each locality.
I said in my statement that the Government would produce clauses on employee protection and particularly on protection for existing shopworkers who took on their work on the basis that they would not work on Sundays and who need protection against being required to work on Sundays in future. We are not inviting outside bodies to help draft wide options on employee protection, because they are concerned solely with shopworkers.
There is nothing unique to shopworkers about working on Sundays. Many other employers and employees have to work or choose to work on Sundays. But that matter, as well as every aspect of the legislation, will be subject to amendment in the usual way. Undoubtedly people will propose amendments on that subject.
The abolition of the wages councils has not the slightest relevance to Sunday trading. They do not exist to regulate working on Sundays.

Mr. Robert Maclennan: Does the Home Secretary consider that spreading six days trading over seven days is unlikely to be profitable unless traders either cut wages or increase prices? Does he agree that there is therefore a risk that Sunday trading will lead to Sunday slaving? Does he accept that it is a mark of a civilised society that it can find for every member of that society one day of rest in the week?

Mr. Clarke: I do not accept the hon. Gentleman's analysis that there is a set amount of shopping, so that, if shops open for seven days rather than six, the same amount of trade will be spread over more time. The proportion of their income which people spend in retail outlets depends on the attractiveness and availability of those outlets. I believe that the effect of relaxation in the law will stimulate more retail activity and more employment.
I note the hon. Gentleman's views. They are the first of many that we shall hear on the overall impact of Sunday trading legislation. The hon. Gentleman represents a

Scottish seat and I well remember that, when the Government last tried to sort out anomalies on the subject, the Second Reading was defeated by large numbers of Scottish Labour Members, who voted against it. This Bill will not apply to Scotland. Scottish law remains totally deregulated and I do not think that l have ever heard a Scottish Member propose to change the law in Scotland, but this is the United Kingdom Parliament and the hon. Gentleman is entitled to his views and to his vote on the measure.

Dame Angela Rumbold: May I take this opportunity to congratulate my right hon. and learned Friend on the extraordinarily sensible way in which he has brought the proposal for the determination of this difficult problem to the House? I am glad to note that both Opposition and Conservative Members will be offered the opportunity of a free vote, which is important. Since the matter will not be brought before the House for resolution for some time, what advice can my right hon. and learned Friend offer to retailers who are opening on Sunday, especially in the run-up to Christmas, and to many people in work and in retailing in these difficult times, who would like retailers to be able to open on Sundays?

Mr. Clarke: My right hon. Friend conducted a wide-ranging consultation on the subject. She sought to achieve a consensus between the most interested parties on how it might be resolved. No one could have made more effort than she did, but it was impossible to produce any agreement. I am glad of her welcome for the way in which we have tried to resolve the matter by a free vote in the House.
The Shops Act 1950 remains in abeyance, because no one knows what the law is until the European Court judgment. We wait to find out whether that will make it clear how the Act might be enforced. Given that my latest information is that the court is not likely to give its judgment before January, it will be left entirely to those responsible for each retail outlet to decide what to do in the run-up to Christmas.

Mr. Patrick Cormack: I thank my right hon. and learned Friend warmly for what he is seeking to do. Will he reflect on what he said a few moments ago? Many people think that the law is not in abeyance. The law of the land is clear and certain and people are choosing deliberately to flout and confound it. When he presents the Bill, will he not seek unduly to advocate his preferred solution? Does he agree that, if subsidiarity means anything, it should allow a country to determine its Sunday trading laws?

Mr. Clarke: I strongly agree with my hon. Friend's last question. I hope that that is the outcome of the European Court judgment, which depends on the effect of previous treaties and legislation in the House. When the legislation passes through the House, in so far as I take part alongside my hon. Friend the Minister of State, I have no doubt that I shall from time to time advocate my opinions and preferred solutions. I shall endeavour to distinguish clearly between speaking on behalf of the Government and speaking in my capacity as the Member for Rushcliffe, as I have when I have found myself in situations of this kind


before. I merely speak as one who has one vote among 650, when I express my opinion or choose between the various options. I shall try to stick to that.
I have described what I think has been the position under the Shops Act 1950 for some time but I should make it clear that, as my right hon. Friend the Attorney-General explained in answer to a question in the House,
local authorities can still issue summonses"—[Official Report, 11 May 1992; Vol. 207, c. 368.]
In a written answer he said:
The decision of the House of Lords
in the Kirklees case
means that local authorities can apply for interim injuctions against retailers in order to enforce the law without giving cross-undertakings in damages."—[Official Report, 15 July 1992; Vol. 211, c.707.]
That is strictly the position. I regard it as unsatisfactory, and I hope that we shall soon enable Parliament to make it clearer.

Mr. Ray Powell: The Home Secretary made a complex statement. I cannot recall in the years that I have been in this place a Minister offering the House three options relating to one Bill. I welcome hon. Members being afforded those options, because some of us have been waiting with bated breath since 1986 for the Government to introduce a measure on Sunday trading. The Government could have taken the opportunity at any time since that date to introduce legislation to resolve the problem of the Shops Act 1950.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman referred to the possibility of research changing people's minds. Having had six years in which to research the whole issue, it is clear that his mind has not been changed. I remind him that the House decided in 1986 by a majority of 14 to throw out the total deregulation proposed by the then Government, who had a majority of over 100 in the House. A whipped vote took place on that occasion, rather than the free vote that the Home Secretary has been kind enough to offer today.
It is clear from the right hon. and learned Gentleman's reply to his hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire, South (Mr. Cormack), and to the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair), that the vote will not be all that free. I should like a free vote when we debate my Shops (Amendment) Bill on 22 January. I would be happy to give a copy of that measure, which has been examined by legal experts, to the Home Secretary so that he may read it and do further research tonight. The Keep Sunday Special Campaign—[Interruption.] This is a complicated issue—

Madam Speaker: Order. I hesitate to intervene in the hon. Gentleman's remarks, but he may have noticed that I was getting rather anxious. I remind him that questions must relate to the Secretary of State's statement. I appreciate that the hon. Gentleman is so immersed in the whole issue that he is anxious to get his points across. I urge him to complete his questioning quickly—we are all anxious to know what he wants to ask—so that I may call other hon. Members.

Mr. Powell: I appreciate what you say, Madam Speaker, and I was coming to my final question. During his busy day yesterday, the Home Secretary may not have noticed the press launch of a campaign about employment

protection. That involved a Cambridge university research document by two professors who had looked into the effects of Sunday trading on employment protection.
I hope that the right hon. and learned Gentleman obtains a copy of that document to make sure that the proposals for total deregulation that he, in his capacity as Home Secretary, is prepared to support, contain provisions relating to employment protection that I hope hon. Members in all parts of the House want included in any legislation. Provisions giving such protection should apply to all of the three options that the right hon. and learned Gentleman is offering.

Mr. Clarke: My track record on this subject is rather blemished, because, in 1986. I replied to the Second Reading debate of the then Shops Bill and tried to persuade the hon. Member for Ogmore (Mr. Powell) and others that if they gave a Second Reading to that measure, the whole issue could be resolved then, if necessary by it being amended in Committee to produce a solution that the House preferred. In my opinion, the previous Parliament ducked its responsibility to change, with the result that we have had six more years of the Shops Act becoming ever more complicated.
We are now proposing the options as I describe them. We shall involve the Keep Sunday Special Campaign in the drafting. I appreciate that those involved with that movement have helped the hon. Member for Ogmore to draft his Bill. I hope that they will now discuss the matter with parliamentary counsel so that there may be no disagreement between parliamentary counsel and their draftsmen about the technicalities of the measure. We may by that means ensure that the measure is in the best possible shape, thereby avoiding the need for drafting amendments later. It may be complicated, because other amendments will no doubt be tabled to each of the options.
A precedent was the embryology Bill, which was a way of resolving a more difficult issue. It was exceedingly complicated and I hope that this matter will be slightly more straightforward. Whatever individual Members may have thought about the outcome, the House agreed at the time that the parliamentary proceedings on the embryology Bill were a model of how to proceed on these difficult social subjects.
I am aware of Cambridge university's research, which is based on a grand survey of 35 retail outlets. However, I shall study it with care and compare it with all the other research that will flow in upon us in the next few months. We all know the high level of interest in the subject.
The private Members' Bill is a matter not for me but for the House on the day when the hon. Gentleman presents it.

Mr. Michael Jopling: Is my right hon. and learned Friend aware that his proposal is a novel but distinctly odd way of legislating? Will he resist the temptation to refuse to answer a hypothetical question and tell us what would happen if the House decided that it preferred his first option with 40 per cent. of the vote, with 30 per cent. going to each of the other two alternatives? If the majority of 60 per cent. then decided to vote down the first option, which he said he preferred, what on earth would we do?

Mr. Clarke: My right hon. Friend is extremely experienced in procedural matters and has asked a shrewd


Chief Whip's question. First, I must satisfy the House authorities that that form of Bill is in order. Obviously, it will be drafted with that in mind. Secondly, we must make sure that the issues are presented to the House so that they can be voted on in good order and in sequence. My right hon. Friend the present Chief Whip and I will be happy to consult my right hon. Friend on how best to sort the matter out.
The alternative is to do what we did in the embryology Bill—put down one preferred option, and then have amendments and vote in sequence. However, I expect that however we proceed it will give rise to some controversy and I hope that we shall have much discussion in the House about a satisfactory method so that we agree an acceptable way to proceed by the time we debate the Bill.

Mr. George Stevenson: Will the Home Secretary give us a little more information about employee protection? His qualifications following his initial statement about employee protection will fill many people with anxiety. We need an assurance that employee protection will be absolutely guaranteed. Furthermore, what is the Home Secretary's view on the position of local authorities like Stoke-on-Trent, which have sought to implement the law as it stands? It has cost local authorities a lot of money to do so. Because the Government have ignored the law, will he consider recompense for those local authorities that have simply tried to enforce the law?

Mr. Clarke: The views on what type of shop should open and what they should sell seem to cut across party lines. Although opinions vary, there is obviously a more philosophical division between the two parties about the extent to which the law should provide, in great detail for employee protection. The hon. Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair) even suggested that we should stipulate rates of pay for particular workers on particular days. The Government will produce proposals on employment protection and hon. Members will have to debate them when they see them. I invite the House to consider employee protection in the context not just of shops but of all the arrangements that have long prevailed for public transport workers, doctors, nurses, the police and others. The Government's instinct is not to go in for tightly regulated employment provisions for the category of people working in shops on Sundays.

Sir Ivan Lawrence: On subsidiarity and whether this nation state should be able to decide whether it wants to trade on Sundays, is my right hon. and learned Friend saying that, if the European Court decides against us on the existing legislation, we shall nevertheless be tied in future legislation to the European Community's wishes? Will he assure us that, if the European Court decides in our favour on the existing legislation, it will not be able to tie us on future legislation which the House decides it wants to introduce?

Mr. Clarke: My hon. and learned Friend seems to agree with the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Stevenson). When local authorities start litigation of any sort, they take the usual risk and must assess their prospects of success and the likelihood of having to hear the cost. There is no provision for the Government to step in to compensate local authorities for that cost.
As for the European Court, my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General has been arguing strongly on

behalf of the British Government that the Shops Act 1950 is perfectly compatible with European law, and the matter should be returned to the British courts. I hope that that is the outcome. The judge advocate's opinion has, so far, broadly supported the proposition—that the court should not be bound by that. When we receive the judgment from the European Court we shall have to see whether it imposes inhibitions on us, so that when we draft future legislation we can ensure that we are not taken back to the European Court.
I do not think that any hon. Member wants the matter to depend on European judgments. It is, self-evidently, a matter that touches on the social mores of England and Wales, and should be determined by this Parliament.

Mr. Jeff Rooker: In the 118 years that I have been in the House I have hardly ever before heard a statement from the right hon. and learned Gentleman with which I almost wholly agree. He has introduced sensible procedural arrangements, and I am confident that it will be possible for the House to make a decision on a choice of the three options that will not necessarily lead to the barmy position of all options being excluded.
I have changed my mind over the past year, and the proposals of the Shopping Hours Reform Council are now my preferred option, although they were not a year ago. A central plank of the reform council's procedures is that there should be some flexibility in the contract of employment arrangements for new employees. If the House were legislating to set up transport on a seven-day basis when previously there had been no public transport on that basis or to open hospitals on a seven-day basis when they had never been opened on that basis before, we would build in contractual arrangements for the employees in those industries. It is right to consider doing that as it is a central plank of the arrangements.
We are legislating for a key sector of social and cultural activity in this country which is virtually unique. That is why we have been unable to find a policy to succeed the 1950 legislation. Therefore, in the circumstances, a case can be made for special arrangments. If the Shopping Hours Reform Council has that policy as its central plank and it is to form one of the options, it would be ludicrous to exclude consideration of it from the arrangements. I ask the Home Secretary, not necessarily to totally reverse his procedure, but to have an open mind on the issue.
Finally, I urge the Home Secretary not to make the same mistake as the then Home Secretary did in 1986 when, on Second Reading, he said from the Dispatch Box that there would be no guillotine on the Bill. That promise lost the Bill its Second Reading vote; the vote had nothing to do with the Bill's content.

Mr. Clarke: I am glad that the hon. Gentleman and it can agree so much on the means of proceeding. I am sure that he and I agree that, unless the House can find a way of resolving such issues, it never gets round to considering the subject at all. Important social issues are put off because nobody can devise a method of handling such topics that completely cut across traditional party divisions.
I do not agree entirely with the hon. Gentleman's analysis of the position with respect to employment protection. We shall reflect on what he and others have


said while we are drafting the Bill. We are proposing arrangements that will be addressed once the Bill is before the House and its provisions are being discussed.
As for guillotining, it is too early to start talking about timetabling a Bill of this sort. When I was winding up the debate on the last occasion we discussed the subject, I well remember spending most of my time trying to explain that I was sure that my right hon. Friend had not said, in such terms, that there would be no guillotine. In my experience, if one promises no guillotine on a Bill, its progress through the House never ends at all.

Mr. Quentin Davies: I join in congratulating my right hon. and learned Friend on presenting a statesmanlike solution to the problem of how the House should handle such a difficult issue. In order that we can have as well-informed and comprehensive a debate as possible—fully worthy of the procedure that my right hon. and learned Friend has just outlined—will the Government prepare in advance some facts and figures on the additional cost to public funds that will ensue if we decide on total deregulation? I have in mind the cost, for example, of parking enforcement, extra policing, refuse collection, and so on. Those may be subsidiary issues but they are important issues none the less, of which the House will wish to take account when the debate comes.

Mr. Clarke: I appreciate my hon. Friend's welcome for this method of proceeding. My initial reaction to the specific points that he has raised is that retailers, for example, pay for the cost of taking away their own refuse and other things. I will certainly undertake to put before the House the results of such research as the Government commissions. I do not intend to commission enormous amounts of such research, because it is my experience that nobody comes up with agreed and objective factual data that in the end have much conclusive effect on individual Members' opinions.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Madam Speaker: Order. We must move on now to the second statement. We shall be returning to this subject before too long.

Revenue Support Grant (England)

The Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Michael Howard): With permission, Madam Speaker, I should like to make a statement about the local authority finance settlement for England for 1993–94.
Next year is the first year of the council tax. As hon. Members will know, the tax will reflect both the value of the property and the number of people who live in it. The lowest value properties are in band A, the highest in band H. The occupants of a band H property will pay no more than three times as much in local tax as the occupants of a band A property in the same area, thus preventing a return to the excessive variations in household bills which occurred under the rates. All 6 million single adult households will receive a 25 per cent. discount. Almost all full-time students will be exempt. Three million households on income support will pay nothing. There will be transitional protection for those households facing higher bills. The new tax will be cheaper and easier to collect than the community charge, because there will be only one bill per household and no need to keep a register.
The council tax will place local government on a strong financial footing. I believe that it has considerable support, not only among members of the public but among local authorities. They have worked hard with us to ensure a smooth and successful introduction of the new tax. I am grateful to them and to the local authority associations for the constructive role that they have played.
In considering the details of the settlement I have taken into account the representations made to me by local authorities and their associations, the responsibilities which local authorities face and the scope for further improvements in value for money. I have had in mind our intention that public sector pay settlements should fall within the range 0 to 1·5 per cent.
I have also considered very carefully what the country as a whole can afford. Local government expenditure accounts for 26 per cent. of general Government expenditure. It has increased by 3·6 per cent. a year in real terms over the past two years. In present economic circumstances it is unreasonable to expect such growth to continue. The Government must keep a tight grip on public spending, and within the total we must give as much priority as we can to capital spending. Local government must play its part, too.
Authorities will be able to spend considerably more on capital projects next year, since they will have full use of nearly all the capital receipts they receive from 13 November to the end of December 1993. I expect this change to make an extra £1·75 billion available to local authorities for capital expenditure. As an additional incentive, I have already announced a range of capital partnership programmes, which offer authorities extra support from my Department to make these receipts go even further and to encourage projects of lasting benefit to local communities and industries.
It was against this background that, on 12 November, I announced the aggregate figures for the local government settlement for the coming year. Those figures have now been increased by £26 million, as announced by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health today in the light of changes to the independent living fund. Taking account of that additional sum, the Government's view is


that the appropriate level of spending for local authorities in England in 1993–94 will be £41·168 billion. Central Government funding in support of that expenditure will be £33·545 billion.
Those figures reflect a number of changes in local authorities' functions next year. They include £565 million which we intend to set aside as a special grant to help authorities as they take on their important new responsibilities for community care. On the other hand, they make no provision for functions, principally further education, for which local authorities will no longer be responsible next year and for which about £2·5 billion was provided in the current year.
Making full allowance for these changes, the year-on-year increases underlying my proposals are 3·1 per cent., which is about £1·2 billion, in the appropriate level of spending and 3·7 per cent., which is also about £1·2 billion, in Government funding. Those increases should enable local authorities to maintain service provision. Overall, local authorities should need to raise no more next year through the council tax than they have budgeted to raise this year from the community charge.
I am today issuing a consultation paper setting out how we propose to distribute that funding. Copies have been placed in the Vote Office and the Library and are being sent to every local authority.
In the statement I made on 12 November, I proposed that the non-domestic rate poundage for 1993–94 should increase by 3·5 per cent. to 41·6p, in line with the rate of inflation. That will ensure that businesses continue to benefit from the Government's success in reducing inflation. In addition, under the changes announced by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor in his Budget statement earlier this year, business ratepayers who stood to benefit from the introduction of the unified business rate or from the 1990 revaluation will receive the whole of their benefit next year. Transitional protection will continue to be available for those who stood to lose, and the shortfall will be made good by the Exchequer.
I now propose to set the distributable amount of non-domestic rates at £11·559 billion. This represents a reduction of £747 million from 1992–93, largely as a result of repayments following appeals. I am today publishing details of the full calculation. All receipts from non-domestic rates continue to be distributed in full to local authorities.
I propose that the total of revenue support grant for 1993–94 will be £17·052 billion. In addition, some £4 billion of specific grants will be available. My detailed proposals for the way in which standard spending assessments will be calculated for 1993–94 are set out in the consultation paper. I have also provided the provisional figure for each authority's standard spending assessment. I am proposing some modifications to the way in which SSAs are calculated.
The main changes are inevitable, as they result either from changes in local authorities' responsibilities or from the new basis of local taxation. The main change of functions is in relation to further education, which will become the responsibility of the Further Education Funding Council from April 1993. This means that a simple comparison of proposed SSAs for 1993–94 with those for 1992–93 will, for all education authorities, show a decrease.
Expenditure on authorities' new community care responsibilities will be funded by the special transitional grant, so there is no allowance for this expenditure in the SSA element for personal social services.
Other changes to the calculation of SSAs result from the use of more up-to-date information. In particular, we now have estimates of resident population for mid-1991 based on the 1991 census. I propose to include these in SSAs for 1993–94 as they clearly represent a better basis than the previous figures based on the 1981 census. I realise, however, that for some authorities there will be changes, either up or down, between these better estimates, only very recently available, and those previously used. I therefore propose to pay a special grant to those authorities whose SSA in 1993–94 will be reduced by 5 per cent. or more as a direct result of incorporating the population estimates based on 1991 census results rather than those based on 1981 census results.
Council taxes will be set locally by individual councils. They will depend on how much councils decide to spend and on how much they provide for non-collection, community charge arrears and successful appeals. There are 366 billing authorities and eight separate valuation bands; so tax levels will inevitably vary widely.
At the level of the individual household, the variation in bills will be even wider, because of single person discounts, income support exemption, council tax benefits, and transitional relief. Against that background, any figure for average taxes needs to be treated with great caution. What matters is the individual tax bill for the individual taxpayer.
In order to distribute grant fairly to each council, we have to allow for different levels of taxable resources in each authority. That means that, for each of the eight valuation bands, we have identified a notional council tax for standard spending which can be derived from the figures. For instance, for band C—two thirds of all properties fall in bands A to C—the council tax for standard spending is £439. I emphasise that those figures are part of the grant calculation. They are not predictions or averages.
Many households, particularly those living in properties in the lower bands, will gain from the council tax. On the other hand, those living in properties in the higher bands should expect to make a relatively larger contribution to the cost of local services. But I am determined that any year-on-year increases in bills between the community charge and the council tax should be held down to affordable levels.
I am therefore proposing a scheme of transitional relief which will ensure that no household faces an excessive increase in liability next year as a result of the introduction of the council tax. Relief will be provided against increases above a specified amount, which will be different for each of the eight valuation bands. For properties in band A, relief will be provided against increases above £1·75 a week. For each higher band, the starting-point for relief will rise by an additional 25p; so for properties in band B it will be £2 a week and for properties in band H it will be £3·50 a week.
I expect that in most cases the calculation of relief under this scheme will be based on authorities' actual budgets and not assumed budgets. The scheme will last for at least two years, and we shall review the arrangements for later years in the light of experience of the operation of the


scheme in 1993–94. I shall set aside resources from the total of Government support to meet the cost of the scheme, which I expect to be about £340 million in the first year.
My Department has written to local authorities today with details of the scheme. Copies of the letter have been placed in the Vote Office and the Library.
I have consistently made it clear to the House that I am determined to protect local taxpayers from unreasonable demands by their local authority. I have no doubt that most authorities will wish to play their part in setting reasonable budgets and reasonable levels of council tax, but where councils propose excessive budgets or excessive increases in budgets, I shall not hesitate to use my powers to protect council tax payers from the consequences and to ensure that local government spending does not rise above affordable levels.
I am today announcing my provisional capping criteria which authorities will need to take into account when they set their budgets over the next few months. I am also issuing my proposals for exercising my statutory powers to specify for each authority a base position—known as a notional amount—by reference to which I intend to measure budget increases for the purposes of applying capping criteria. I have placed papers in the Library and Vote Office setting out in detail my provisional criteria and my proposals for notional amounts. Copies have been sent to local authorities.
No authority that sets a budget at or below its SSA can or will be capped. Only those that budget above their SSA are potentially liable to capping. I intend to allow larger increases for authorities with budgets close to their SSAs than for those whose budgets are higher. Where budgets are very substantially above SSA, I intend to seek budget reductions, but in all cases I intend the reductions to be manageable.
I am proposing that each authority's notional amount is to be its 1992–93 budget adjusted to reflect changes in boundaries and functions and that under the new council tax system interest on collection fund cash flow will for the first time fall within the authority's budget.
My intended criteria are therefore as follows. Any increase of more than 2·5 per cent. over the 1992–93 notional amount will be considered an excessive increase if it gives rise to a budget requirement over the authority's SSA. Any increase of more than 1·75 per cent. over the 1992–93 notional amount will be considered an excessive increase if it gives rise to a budget requirement over I per cent. above the authority's SSA. Any increase of more than 1 per cent. over the 1992–93 notional amount will be considered an excessive increase if it gives rise to a budget requirement over 5 per cent. above the authority's SSA. Any increase of more than 0·5 per cent. over the 1992–93 notional amount will be considered an excessive increase if it gives rise to a budget requirement over 10 per cent. above the authority's SSA.
In addition, I intend that any budget requirement more than 12·5 per cent. above the SSA will be considered excessive, save that an authority will not be designated if it fulfuls certain conditions equivalent to the conditions which I applied this year.
This year, I adopted a de minimis proviso allowing authorities budgeting by no more than £1·50 per adult above the criteria for excessiveness not to be designated. I

told the House at that time that it should not be assumed that in any future year we would judge such a de minimis provision to be appropriate. Local authorities should not assume that there will be any such proviso or principle for 1993–94.
My proposals allow for the particular circumstances of the inner London boroughs which still bear the cost of overspending inherited from the Inner London education authority and of the City of London.
Those criteria are necessarily provisional. When I come to make my decisions on capping, I shall, of course, take into account all appropriate considerations.
My proposals for local authority spending and for external support are realistic and manageable in the current economic circumstances and, in particular, in the light of the Government's policy on public sector pay. We expect pay settlements for local government employees within a range of 0 per cent. to 1·5 per cent. over the coming year. Given my proposed increases of 3·1 per cent. in total spending and 3·7 per cent. in external support, provided that local authorities manage their resources efficiently, they should be able to maintain the full range of services they provide.
This settlement also means that authorities will not need overall to raise from their taxpayers next year any more than they did under the community charge this year. For individual taxpayers, my proposals will provide additional protection in two ways: through capping, which will restrain unreasonable levels of spending, and through the transitional relief scheme.
I am confident that this settlement will provide local authorities with the resources that they need to deliver the wide range of local services of the quality which people expect and deserve and at a level of tax which they can afford.

Mr. Jack Straw: Is it not true that the Secretary of State's statement will mean cuts in vital public services throughout the country, with nursery classes closed, library provision ended in many areas and higher charges for meals on wheels and home helps—all because the right hon. and learned Gentleman has been ready to sacrifice the needs of children, the elderly, the sick and families to sweeten the pill for the rich of the introduction of the council tax?
Is the Secretary of State not aware that, having failed the nation once by forcing through the poll tax against overwhelming hostility, he is now failing the nation a second time? Will he confirm that the announced 3·1 per cent. increase in so-called total standard spending is a bogus figure; that councils will be short of £200 million in cash, comparing this year's budgets with next year's settlement; and that this can only mean job losses, even with a total pay freeze? Was not that the implication of the right hon. and learned Gentleman's weasel words, when he said in his statement that these increases "should" enable local authorities to maintain service provision? Is he saying that these levels of settlement will enable authorities to maintain service provision? Will he guarantee that there will be no service cuts and no job losses? Has he made any calculations about the statement's effects on jobs and services? Is the right hon. and learned Gentleman proud, or sorry, that his policies have already led to the loss of 6,700 teaching posts in the past year?
On council tax, will the Secretary of State confirm that his announced band C of £439 is £57, or 15 per cent., above


the level promised by his predecessor, the right hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine), even allowing for inflation since he claimed those figures? The right hon. Member for Henley claimed that band C would he £356. Allowing for inflation since then, that would be £382, not £439.
Given that, will the Secretary of State now apologise for the way in which the right hon. Member for Henley misled the House and the country in the run-up to the election, and will he apologise for the fact that only two weeks ago he sought to mislead the House by pretending that no such predictions had ever been made?

Madam Speaker: Order.

Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours: My hon. Friend did not say "deliberately".

Madam Speaker: Order. Perhaps the hon. Member will allow me to deal with the matter. The hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) knows that we do not use such terminology.

Mr. Straw: Will the Secretary of State apologise for the way in which he sought to confuse the House and to dissemble over the fact that he knew very well that the right hon. Member for Henley had made predictions about the level of the council tax before the eletion, well knowing that the Government would never implement such levels after the election?
Why has the Secretary of State pretended in public that the council tax will be fair, when in private, in a letter to Conservative Back Benchers, he has trumpeted its unfairness? Why has the Secretary of State rigged the system, to quote his words, so that someone in a £350,000 house will pay only three times the council tax of someone in a £35,000 flat, not 10 times the tax?
Will the Secretary of State confirm that the single person's discount will mean that a single company director earning £100,000 a year and living in a £350,000 house will pay no more council tax than a pensioner couple living in a £120,000 house with below-average income?
Will the Secretary of State confirm that the majority of people who will gain from transitional relief are those who also gained from the poll tax? Is it correct that in Wandsworth the maximum council tax can only be £3·50 a week, given the operation of the transitional relief scheme?
Will the Secretary of State confirm that the £1·75 billion that he is claiming that local authorities can raise is based on wholly tendentious assumptions that the authorities will be able to sell that number of assets and that, what is more, he has not mentioned that £330 million of that amount, even if it is raised, is to be clawed back by reductions in central Government's credit approvals on top of which the Government have cancelled the urban programme?
Is it not the truth that the Secretary of State's capping regime has been specifically designed to force through cuts in services and jobs? Does he not understand that his threat to cap every authority is contrary to the view of his predecessor, the right hon. Member for Henley? Writing in The Times two years ago, the right hon. Gentleman said that councils should be
free to set and account for their own budgets".
Not only is it contrary to the right hon. Gentleman's view; it is contrary to the Secretary of State's own view, expressed to Parliament, that charge-capping powers

should be used only "rarely", where a council acts "irrationally" and "contrary to all reason", and contrary to his words to the House:
The people of an area certainly will be able to vote for a relatively high-spending authority if they so choose."—[Official Report, 25 April 1988; Vol. 132, c. 51.]
Since many Conservative as well as Labour authorities are now spending at the cap, is the Secretary of State claiming that those authorities have been acting irrationally in seeking to protect services in their areas? What does the Secretary of State have to say to Conservative councillors in, say, Harrow, who are now having to consider £13 million of cuts and hundreds of job losses to keep within the cap?
Is the Secretary of State not aware that the standard spending assessments can only be a rough and ready system for the distribution of grant? Is it not an affront to good government and to democracy for such complex algebraic formulae to be used by him to ride roughshod over the judgment of 24,000 democratically elected councillors of all parties and their voters on what should be the appropriate level of services in their areas?
Where is the reason in an SSA system that provides £200 more for each pupil in Berkshire than in Wigan? Where is the justice in a system which gives Gloucestershire £7·5 million for nursery education when it has no nursery schools, while punishing North Tyneside for providing a nursery place for almost every child?
Is not the Secretary of State's SSA system, the base for this central control, nothing more than a grotesque farce, given that it has taken Ministers three years to end the lunatic regulation that assumed that Brent had more snow than Cumbria, and Camden more snow than Lancashire? It has taken the Secretary of State three years to end what was blatantly obvious to everyone else.
When will the Secretary of State understand that while across Europe, east and west, other countries have been moving to devolve power to local communities and their councils, the Conservative Government in Britain today now have such tight central control of local authorities that it is unparallelled in the industrialised world outside the former Soviet Union? If subsidiarity is to mean anything, is it not time that it began to mean something at home?
Is this not a bad statement about a poor system from an utterly incompetent and uncaring Secretary of State?

Mr. Howard: The lament of the hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) is the latest in a long line that we have heard from Labour spokesmen after revenue support grant statements. Year after year we are told by the Labour party that increases in Government support will lead to slashing cuts in services and job losses. If the Opposition's predictions had been correct, we would not have any more teachers, policemen or home helps employed by local government.
Nowhere in the hon. Gentleman's remarks was there any sense that local councils might run their services more efficiently, that there is a need to protect capital investment or to keep firm control of current spending. Nowhere was there any recognition of the interests of the taxpayer; rather, there was one giant hole in the hon. Gentleman's remarks: how much extra does he think should be provided to local authorities next year? Has he cleared any figure that he might have in mind with the hon. Member


for Peckham (Ms. Harman)? How would he raise that extra money—through income tax or through higher borrowing?
The hon. Gentleman suggested that the figures that I gave of a 3·7 per cent. increase in funding and a 3·1 per cent. increase in spending were bogus.[Interruption.] He says that now. But it was not a bogus figure. The bogus figure was the figure that the hon. Gentleman gave. He was not comparing like with like, and I was. That is why my figure was accurate and his figure was nonsense.
The hon. Gentleman referred to the figure for the CTSS. He compared it with what he said was a figure promised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine), but he knows perfectly well that my right hon. Friend never promised any level of council tax at all, that he never made any predictions about council tax and that the figures that were published by my right hon. Friend were in response to the Opposition's demand that the Government should provide figures on the same assumptions that the Opposition have made—unrealistic assumptions. The figures were published not as promises or predictions, but in response to demands made by the Opposition.
We have heard some interesting points from the hon. Gentleman. We have heard that he is against the single person discount of 25 per cent. He is against a discount that will benefit 6 million people next year, and they will remember that Labour was against providing them with that help. The hon. Gentleman is against transitional relief —and the 3·75 million people who will benefit from it also will remember that Labour was against providing them with any help next year.
The hon. Gentleman is against capping because he does not recognise that it is essential to restrain central or local government expenditure. He clings to the same absurd approach that Labour took at the last general election, when it wanted to cap the assembly that it proposed for Scotland but not cap any local authority in England, Scotland or Wales.
The hon. Gentleman had a clear test to face today. Labour local authority leaders want a successful introduction to the council tax and in September told the Leader of the Opposition to soft-pedal his opposition. Local councils do not want the upheaval that would be caused by the need to introduce yet another form of local taxation and neither does anyone else—except members of the Opposition Front Bench. Far from co-operating responsibly as their local authority leaders would wish, they are determined to do all that they can to undermine the new tax.
The partisan claptrap that we heard from the hon. Gentleman this afternoon shows how dismally Labour is failing the test of opposition—and far more so that of government.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Madam Speaker: Order. Before we proceed, I make the point that the exchanges between the two Front-Bench speakers lasted half an hour. I am looking not for comments or statements but for brief questions to the Secretary of State. I am sure that the right hon. and learned Member will be equally brief and helpful in his answers.

Sir Paul Beresford: Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that the brief mention by the hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) of Wandsworth failed to acknowledge that the opportunities for adjacent authorities that have similar standard spending assessments, but are Labour and Liberal-controlled, would be exactly the same if they were efficient and provided decent, value-for-money, quality services?

Mr. Howard: I agree, and I have every confidence that Wandsworth's future performance will continue to provide a benchmark against which people can judge the performance of responsible Conservative local government against that of irresponsible local authorities controlled by Labour or the Liberal Democrats.

Mr. Nigel Jones: Can the Secretary of State estimate the number of job losses that will result from his statement, and the average council tax in the various bands that he announced? What does he have to say to the Association of District Councils, which yesterday passed a motion condemning capping because it takes away the ability of local councillors to undertake the programme on which they were elected and denies the people the high-quality, properly managed services for which they voted?

Mr. Howard: I would say to the association exactly what I said to the hon. Member for Blackburn a few moments ago—and in deference to your remarks, Madam Speaker, I shall not repeat my observations. We will not forecast the average council tax because, as the hon. Gentleman will appreciate, council tax will be fixed by local authorities next year and I am not in a position to say the precise level at which they will each fix it. If local authorities manage their resources sensibly and adhere to the public sector pay policy guidelines of between 0 per cent. and 1·5 per cent., there will be no need for job losses.

Mr. Alan Howarth: I draw to the attention of my right hon. and learned Friend the two volumes of closely reasoned argument presented by Warwickshire county council to his Department and the numerous representations made by Members of Parliament representing Warwickshire constituencies, detailing the deficiencies and anomalies of the county's standard spending assessment. Will my right hon. and learned Friend tell the House what action he has taken in this settlement to remedy the injustices suffered by my county and my constituents?

Mr. Howard: My hon. Friend has fought hard for the interests of Warwickshire and has drawn its grievances to my attention on more than one occasion. I considered his material very carefully and, although we have not been able to make extensive changes to SSAs this year, I shall keep that matter under close review.

Mr. Clive Betts: Is not the Secretary of State really concerned about the relatively affluent people living in larger houses who would have to pay more council tax? Given his failure to secure £2 billion of transitional relief, is he not seeking to protect the wealthy from any increase by imposing a draconian capping regime that will cause thousands of redundancies and destroy basic services in authorities such as my own, in Sheffield, and those in authorities of all political persuasions throughout the country? Will not the


constituents of Conservative Members as well as those of my right hon. and hon. Friends recognise the severity of the cuts imposed by the Secretary of State's package when they see housing, education and social services in their areas undermined and destroyed?

Mr. Howard: I doubt whether any right hon. or hon. Member can speak with greater authority about irresponsible local authority overspending than the hon. Gentleman, so I do not propose to take any lectures from him. There was never any question of £2 billion of transitional relief—I do not know from where the hon. Gentleman plucked that figure. I have just announced the details of our effective system of transitional relief. We also have a capping system that will ensure that local government plays its full part in restraining general Government expenditure, which is essential for this country's economic performance.

Mr. David Sumberg: My right hon. and learned Friend will know from my meetings with members of his Department of the widespread concern and anger in Bury that the council is proposing to close nursery classes, reception classes and a whole raft of local services. Will he acknowledge the great demand in the community that I represent for a reappraisal of the grant mechanism? There is a belief in Bury that, being a small borough, it is not treated fairly.

Mr. Howard: I know the lengths to which my hon. Friend goes in making sure that Bury's case is powerfully made, and I have no doubt that he will continue to miss no opportunity to ensure that that continues. We think that Bury is fairly treated under the proposals that I announced today, but that is, of course, a consultation exercise and we are open to any further points that Bury wishes to make.

Dr. Roger Berry: Will the Secretary of State contrast the Government's immediate decision to provide £50 million to repair Windsor castle with the effect of his statement, which will be to impose £50 million of cuts on Avon county council services? Does he acknowledge that the use this year of funds and balances to protect services had the full support of Avon's Conservative councillors? Will he extend his concern for one family living in Windsor to the thousands of families in my constituency of Kingswood and throughout Avon, so that their children's education will not be further damaged and that care for the elderly and disabled will not be further disrupted?

Mr. Howard: That is a thoroughly unworthy intervention, of which the hon. Gentleman should be ashamed. I am confident that it will evoke no greater sympathy in Avon than it has in all sensible parts of the House.

Sir Anthony Durant: Will my right hon. and learned Friend confirm that transitional relief will be based not on a notional figure but on the actual level of the local tax?

Mr. Howard: I can confirm that. Subject to few conditions, that will be the case—it represents a great advance on previous years, when transitional relief was based on notional budgets. We intend as far as possible to base relief on the actual budgets fixed by local authorities, and we expect to be able to do so in the overwhelming majority of cases.

Mr. David Clelland: How can the Secretary of State justify the cuts in jobs and essential services that his announcement implies for places such as the city of Newcastle and the metropolitan borough of Gateshead, when his own Government recognise that they are in need of special help? What implications does the statement have for crime levels in Northumbria, and what suggestions does the right hon. and learned Gentleman have, given the imminent ending of the urban crime fund? Will not the Secretary of State go down in history as the Marsham street strangler—slowly choking the life out of democratic local government?

Mr. Howard: I have no need to justify the job losses alleged by the hon. Gentleman, because there is no need for them to occur. If local authorities manage their resources sensibly and adhere to the public sector pay policy guidelines, they will have the resources that the hon. Gentleman's own authority needs to provide the services that he identified. I have held discussions with his neighbour about the ways in which the initiative that led to the urban crime fund can be continued.

Mr. James Paice: I very much welcome the use of more up-to-date figures, which must benefit growing counties such as Cambridgeshire. Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that the apparent concern expressed about job losses would be much more valid if the hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) and others had set an example last night in regard to pay restraint, instead of copping out of a difficult decision?

Mr. Howard: My hon. Friend is quite right. Not for the first time, he has identified an example of the yawning gap between the words that we hear from the Opposition and the actions that they perform.

Mr. Peter Hardy: The Secretary of State appeared to acknowledge the defects that have featured in previous years' standard spending grants and to recognise the difficulties inherent in using the 1981 census. Does he accept, however, that a quick glance at the figures suggests that unemployment and economic deprivation have not figured adequately in the determination of grant? Ai a result, areas suffering from those conditions will find it extremely difficult to maintain services, however prudent their spending may have been. Such areas will experience an increase in public squalor and a marked reduction in their authorities' capacity to meet serious need.

Mr. Howard: I do not accept the hon. Gentleman's criticisms. Although the standard spending assessment makes no specific allowance for the factors that he mentioned, allowance is made for many other factors that lead to similar consequences. The hon. Gentleman said that he had had a quick look at the assessment; if he reads the report in detail, he will find that the way in which other factors are taken into account goes a long way towards dealing with the problem that he has identified.

Mr. Eric Pickles: My right hon. and learned Friend's announcement about transitional relief has gone some way towards relieving my constituents' anxieties, but does he recognise that the tightness of the settlement will cause some local authorities difficulties? I refer to authorities which do not collect the community charge, rates or rents, which leave properties


empty and which will kick and scream to get any services out of competitive tendering. If any jobs are to be lost, they will be lost in Labour and Liberal authorities that simply do not get their act together.

Mr. Howard: For the benefit of local government, my hon. Friend has helpfully identified a checklist of policies that they should put into effect if they are to ensure that they can respond to this settlement constructively, without any of the dire consequences of doom and gloom that have been predicted by Labour.

Mr. Paddy Tipping: Does the Secretary of State accept that he sets the revenue support grant and the business rate and that, because of his stringent capping powers, he effectively sets the level of council tax throughout the country and throughout Nottinghamshire? His talk of law and order services has a hollow ring, given that the Nottinghamshire chief constable wants 60 extra police officers, the county council could fund 20 and the Government will provide none.

Mr. Howard: No; I do not accept for a moment that it is the Government who set the council tax for authorities in Nottinghamshire or elsewhere. We set the limits—the constraints—which are necessary, for reasons that I advanced earlier, but local authorities are allowed a good deal of discretion within which to set the council tax. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will exert on his local authority whatever influence he may possess and will encourage it to behave in the way suggested a few moments ago by my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. Pickles).

Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman: Does my right hon. and learned Friend accept that a large majority of the houses in my constituency are in the lower council tax bands and that they suffered cruelly under the community charge? They will definitely benefit from the new arrangements. Moreover, many of my constituents are single householders who suffered under the rating system: they, too, will benefit. As my right hon. and learned Friend will know, our bete noire is the extravagant spending of Lancashire county council. I am delighted that he is to cap the council firmly and make it behave for once.

Mr. Howard: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. We shall have to wait and see what budget Lancashire county council sets for next year before deciding whether to cap it; I hope that it, in common with other local authorities, will note the capping criteria that I have set and will set its budget within those criteria. In that event, I shall not need to impose a cap. I am sure that my hon. Friend will lose no opportunity of drawing to the council's attention the significance of the criteria that I announced.

Mr. Harry Barnes: One massive evil of the poll tax that still remains is the methodology by which the standard spending assessments, and therefore the grants, are determined. The only alterations of which we have heard are those introduced by further education and community care legislation and by the carrying out of a census. In other respects, the same methodology is used—a methodology that has placed North East Derbyshire district council, for instance, in

365th position among 366 authorities in England and Wales, while some other authorities receive two or three times as much per resident.
The formulae should be changed and the allocation should be redistributed. Will the Secretary of State publish the figures, placing the amounts in order, to show each district and each county area the amount that they receive? The Government are supposed to believe in league tables; let us have some league tables now so that we can see what is going on.

Mr. Howard: If the hon. Gentleman visits the Vote Office, he will find that all the information he needs is there in voluminous quantities. We consult local authority associations scrupulously on the way in which we assess the amount of grant that each authority should receive. As even the hon. Gentleman will realise on reflection, it is not possible to arrive at a system that pleases everyone. I accept that our system does not altogether please the hon. Gentleman, but it is a fair system, which is the result of extensive consultation.

Mr. Michael Ancram: Will my right hon. and learned Friend confirm that local taxpayers in areas with responsible councils, such as Wiltshire, will do better than those who are governed by irresponsible, high-spending Labour or Liberal Democrat councils? Will he also confirm that the cost of electing irresponsible councils will still be borne largely by those who elect them, rather than by the taxpayer in general? In the light of that, once the council tax has settled down, would my right hon. and learned Friend be prepared to re-examine the unified business rate to see whether it too can be made to work more fairly?

Mr. Howard: I entirely agree with the first part of my hon. Friend's question. On average, each Labour councillor costs £238,137 more, and each Liberal Democrat councillor £107,423 more, than each Conservative councillor. That bears out in some detail, and with some force, what my hon. Friend said.
I fear that I cannot hold out any hope of further action on the business rate. As my hon. Friend will know, the fact that the rate now increases by no more than inflation is a great safeguard for business, after years in which profligate Labour authorities used to heap huge increases on business, year after year. My hon. Friend will also be aware of the measures taken by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor in this year's Budget, which afforded substantial relief to business rate payers.

Mr. Andrew F. Bennett: Does the Secretary of State recall that, when the Government began to alter local government finance, they made two claims: that the new arrangement would be simpler and easier to understand and that it would be fairer? Does he really think that the system described in his statement is simpler and easier to understand? Does he really think that it is fairer for my constituents in Tameside still to have to pay substantially more next year than people in, for instance, Wandsworth? Should not the Secretary of State have apologised to the House for the mess that the Government have made of the system and, in particular, for all the money that was wasted in the introduction of the poll tax?

Mr. Howard: I very much doubt that it is given to man to find a system of financing local government that would


please the hon. Gentleman. I think that the system that we have put in place, which will take effect from 1 April next year, is sensible and will attract support from those who want to put arguments about the method of local government finance behind them once and for all.

Sir Dudley Smith: Am I right in believing that, overall, the majority of householders will pay less under this fairer system, and has my right hon. and learned Friend any facts and figures that are comparable with the old rating system?

Mr. Howard: It will crucially depend on the level of council tax that local authorities fix next year, but I expect that more people will benefit from the introduction of the council tax than will lose.

Mr. Nigel Spearing: But does not the Secretary of State realise that we can all agree on at least one of his sentences—that sufficient resources should be made available to councils to provide proper services? Is he aware that the available money for the London borough of Newham is £10 million less than the total SSA estimated by the Government as necessary expenditure on services? That is equivalent to the difference between the amount that the council must pay in capital repayments and interest and the amount of the relevant SSA. However, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, writing to me last year, said that the capital borrowed by councils was not under the control of the Government. Does the Secretary of State agree, therefore, that the Government should fix the SSA pro rata to the amount for which they give permission and that, unless they do so, they can be accused of financial fraud?

Mr. Howard: I do not entirely follow the hon. Gentleman's point. It is for local authorities to decide how much they wish to spend on capital projects. They make their capital spending decisions, and those charges have financial consequences. I am sure that the London borough of Newham was aware of those consequences when it took the decisions to which I referred. The documents that I have placed in the Vote Office are part of a consultation exercise and I shall listen to any points that the hon. Gentleman or his local authority wish to make in the course of that exercise.

Mr. James Hill: I agree with my right hon. and learned Friend about the democratic right of local authorities to fix their own budgets, but the mistake that was made with the community charge was that those budgets were not monitored close enough, were not capped early enough and, like my authority, were allowed to spend many millions of pounds on wasteful schemes. Auditors are taking Southampton city council to court for wasteful and illegal expenditure of well over £1 million. Such action shows that my right hon. and learned Friend must act quickly to cap wasteful authorities.

Mr. Howard: My hon. Friend is entirely right to draw attention to such important matters. I shall not hesitate to use the capping powers which I have announced where councils spend excessively and breach the criteria.

Mr. Bryan Davies: Has the right hon. and learned Gentleman been following a script from "Dad's Army"? Has he not displayed all the ruthless centralising ambition of a Napoleon with the bumbling incompetence of a Captain Mainwaring? In so

far as his figures add up, do they not do so solely on the basis of a pay increase of 0 to 1·5 per cent. for some of the lowest paid workers—dinner ladies, home helps and others —and is it not scandalous of the Government to demand that of them?

Mr. Howard: I defer to the hon. Gentleman on "Dad's Army"; but the Government have said that people in public sector work should be prepared to make a sacrifice to increase the prospects of jobs for those who are out of work. I should have thought that that message might just command the support of the hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends. If it does not yet do so, I ask them to reflect and reconsider, because it has widespread support among the people of this country.

Mr. Douglas French: Will my right hon. and learned Friend confirm that, in calculating the SSA for the city of Gloucester, he has taken fully into account the population changes resulting from the boundary changes —which, he will acknowledge, were not taken fully into account last year?

Mr. Howard: Without going into what was or was not fully taken into account last year, for next year I can answer my hon. Friend's question in the affirmative.

Mr. George Stevenson: The Secretary of State claims that the council tax is fair. Is he aware that its relief provisions for disabled people are grossly unfair, because someone in the top band can claim relief for disablement, taking him down to the next lowest band, but there is no band into which someone who is in the bottom band can fall? The right hon. and learned Gentleman's proposals and the council tax discriminate unfairly against disabled people in the lower band of the council tax. What does he intend to do about that discrimination?

Mr. Howard: The purpose of the relief to which the hon. Gentleman refers is to ensure that disabled people are not penalised unfairly because a house has an extra room or extra facilities for them. For that reason, we say that such a property should be deemed to be in a band lower than it would otherwise be. If a property is already in the bottom band, it cannot, by definition, be put into a lower band. I should have thought that that would be apparent even to the hon. Gentleman.

Mr. Nigel Waterson: Will my right hon. and learned Friend agree to reconsider the way in which SSAs are calculated for coastal resorts such as Eastbourne, particularly tourism statistics, ward-weighted density arid coastal protection?

Mr. Howard: I very much understand the concerns to which my hon. Friend referred. Tourism statistics are now taken into account in the calculation of the standard spending assessment, as my hon. Friend will see when he examines the documents in the Vote Office. As I have said, this is a consultation document, and I shall listen carefully to representations from my hon. Friend or his local authority.

Mr. Doug Henderson: Will the Secretary of State be honest with the House arid acknowledge that, in attempting to appease the rich in the leafy suburbs, his statement will lead to a severe cut in essential public services in many parts of the country? Will


he acknowledge that, at a time when almost 3 million people are out of work, his statement will lead to the loss of many jobs of those employed directly in the public sector and those in the private sector who are dependent on public sector purchases of goods and services?
Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman further acknowledge that the reduction in the real level of local authority resources will turn the screw on the recession and further weaken our economy? Given the consultations that he will have with the many authorities such as Harrow that will inevitably troop into his office to make representations, will he give a commitment now to modify spending limits and capping procedures and allow authorities of different persuasions to provide the essential services that their communities demand?

Mr. Howard: I do not accept any of the points that the hon. Gentleman made, for the reasons that I gave when answering other Labour Members' points. I understood that the Labour party intended to start singing a new tune, but we have heard this evening the same old discordant tune and the same old failed message—spend more, tax more, waste more. That is the message that the Labour party still gives to the people of this country, and that is why it will continue to be rejected by them.

Points of Order

Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours: On a point of order, Madam Speaker. Will you consider the rather silly games that are played by Government business managers, who insist on placing important documents such as this in the Vote Office, to be collected by Members only when Ministers take their seats? Today, as the Minister sat down, there must have been 40 or 50 Members scrambling outside the Vote Office like children—I was one of them—to get copies of papers to bring into the Chamber for our hon. Friends. This place is reduced to a farce when we operate on that basis, and I ask you to consider whether the rules could be changed.
It was only when I looked at the document that I was able to establish the fact that a millionaire house owner in Mayfair would be paying less council tax—

Madam Speaker: Order. A point of order to me is one thing, and the hon. Gentleman raised a reasonable point; however, he must not use that as a platform for continuing the exchanges. Of course, it has always been the practice that documents should be made available in the Vote Office—[Interruption.] Order. Allow me to finish speaking. It has always been the practice for documents to be made available when the Minister concerned has finished speaking. I quite understand how difficult it is for hon. Members when there are a great many documents to be read immediately so that questions may be put. I have been a Back Bencher myself. Perhaps I shall examine the matter further.

Mr. Tony Blair: On a point of order, Madam Speaker. I should be grateful if you would assist us. You will have heard the Home Secretary make a statement to the House earlier today, on Sunday trading, in which he said that the Government would allow Conservative Members a free vote on the provisions of the Sunday trading legislation. Indeed, he emphasised that point several times and sought an assurance from me that there would be a free vote on the Opposition side. I gave that assurance, but subsequently—probably because of an error—notes for the Home Secretary to use in answering supplementary questions have been circulating among the press.
Those notes include an answer to the theoretical question:
Will the Government whip through their employee protection provisions?
Those provisions will be an important part of the legislation on Sunday trading. The answer provided for the Home Secretary to use was:
It is too early to say.
In other words, the basis on which the statement was given to the House, and on which we questioned the Home Secretary—that there would be a free vote—has now been thrown into doubt by the right hon. and learned Gentleman's notes on answers to supplementary questions. I should be grateful if you, would tell us how we can ensure that the Home Secretary makes an accurate statement to the House, so that we may question him on it. The matters concerned will be at the very heart of the legislation.

Madam Speaker: The hon. Gentleman will understand that I can concern myself only with questions and answers


across the Floor of the House, not with what happens outside the Chamber. Of course, it is for Members themselves to pursue with Ministers the way in which the House will finally divide on particular legislation. The way in which individual Members or parties vote in the House is certainly not a matter for the Chair.

Mr. Dennis Skinner: Further to that point of order, Madam Speaker. There is another way of dealing with the matter. When my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair) makes such comments, what he says will finish up in Hansard tomorrow, and the Home Secretary can read it. Even better, it has occasionally been known for Ministers to be brought hack to the Dispatch Box to correct what they have said. Before today is out, the Home Secretary should be brought here and challenged by Opposition Members. We shall still be here tonight, and we shall demand a proper statement, because the right hon. and learned Gentleman has misled the House into believing that the Tories will have a free vote from the very beginning of Second Reading right through to the end. It is pretty obvious that that will not be the case.

Madam Speaker: The points of order raised by the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) are often of great interest to the House. One reason why we shall have an
Official Report tomorrow—indeed, one reason why we record all our proceedings—is so that we can all see what has been said the day before, and perhaps make some corrections if that proves necessary.

Mr. Nigel Spearing: On a point of order, Madam Speaker. With regard to your assertion of your intention to consider further the matter raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours), I understand that the release of any papers relating to a ministerial statement is in the hands of the Minister concerned, who may, if he wishes, instruct the Deliverer of the Vote to make such statements available before the Minister rises to speak, when he rises, or later. I beg you, Madam Speaker, to check on that matter, and to bear it in mind when considering any action which you may wish to take.

Madam Speaker: I shall certainly bear that matter in mind.

Statutory Instruments, &c.

Madam Speaker: With permission, I shall put together motions relating to statutory instruments.

Motion made, and Question put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 101(3) (Standing Committees on Statutory Instruments, &c.) ,

TRANSPORT AND WORKS

That the draft Transport and Works (Descriptions of Works Interfering with Navigation) Order 1992 be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c.

That the draft Transport and Works (Guided Transport Modes) Order 1992 be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c.

ROAD TRAFFIC

That the draft Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 (Amendment) Order 1993 be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c.

ESTATE AGENTS

That the Estate Agents (Specified Offences) (No. 2) (Amendment) Order 1992 (S.I., 1992, No. 2833) be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c.

CONSUMER PROTECTION

That the Child Resistant Packaging and Tactile Danger Warnings (Safety) (Revocation) Regulations 1992 (S.I., 1992, No. 2620) be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c.

SOCIAL SECURITY

That the Social Security (Miscellaneous Provisions) Amendment (No. 2) Regulations 1992 (S.I., 1992, No. 2595) be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c.

That the Income Support (General) Amendment (No. 3) Regulations 1992 (S.I., 1992, No. 2804) be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c.

NATIONAL HEALTH SERVICE

That the National Health Service (Determination of Districts) (No. 4) Order 1992 (S.I., 1992, No. 2751) be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c.

That the National Health Service (District Health Authorities) (No. 4) Order 1992 (S.I., 1992, No. 2752) be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c.

COUNTY COURTS

That the County Court (Amendment No. 2) Rules 1992 (S.I., 1992, No. 1965) be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c.—[Mr. Kirkhope.]

Question agreed to.

Public Service

Motion made, and Question proposed, That his House do now adjourn. —[Mr. Kirkhope.]

The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. William Waldegrave): On Second Reading of the Civil Service (Management Functions) Bill earlier this month, the hon. Member for Redcar (Ms. Mowlam) asked for a wider debate on the management of the public service, and I was happy to respond to that idea. I promised to consult my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House on whether we could have an early debate, and I am glad to say that we have managed to find the time for it.
I am especially pleased that we are having this debate so quickly after the publication yesterday of the White Paper, "The Citizen's Charter First Report: 1992". This is a good moment for considering the Government's wider policies on privatisation, market testing and other issues related to the management of public services.
It is true to say that fundamental change for the better has been under way in the management of the public service ever since 1979. It is worth recalling that on the day on which this process of change began—4 May 1979—the last of the debris, both literal and figurative, had only just been cleared away after the previous winter's near-anarchy, the bulk of it in the public sector. The inflationary consequences of the pay settlements with which the outgoing Labour Government attempted to buy off that chaos damaged the economy for years.
It was a squalid and disappointing, although in retrospect perhaps inevitable, end to what now appears an ill-controlled expansion of many public services without sufficient attention being paid to the forms in which they were to be managed. As Mr. Anthony Crosland had said not long before, the party was indeed over.
There had been much idealism in the early days, but the results, in practice, were all too often empire building, limited concern for efficiency, and above all excessive domination by the providers of services rather than by the interests of the users. The customers and consumers of the services were not seen, as they should have been, as the be-all and end-all of the whole operation. Complaints were always used as proof of the need for extra resources rather than as a spur to efficiency, flexibility and new ideas. The electorate was presented with a false choice—between higher taxes or poorer services. They emphatically rejected that choice in 1979, in 1983, in 1987 and in 1992. It is a lesson that, once learned, shows little sign of ever being forgotten.
The reality is that on the one hand the potential costs of the public service rise inexorably in the face of scientific and technical progress and rising expectation. On the other hand, taxpayers here and elsewhere around the world are no longer prepared to hand over 25 per cent. let alone 40 per cent., 50 per cent. or more of their income without clear evidence that the Government will make every effort to ensure that that money is spent efficiently, and to the greatest benefit of the user of the services that Governments provide.
Public services in this country are now in the process of changing fundamentally to meet that reality, and they will continue to do so. The change does not lie in the basic nature of those in the public services. As the White Paper makes clear, the Government recognise the obvious need

for good public services on a continuing basis, and recognise the quality of this country's many excellent public servants. But we cannot expect a public service to work efficiently, however competent and industrious those in it, if it labours under local management which has been made powerless and unimaginative by distant and centralised control; and which lives within a structure which ignores the whole worldwide revolution in ideas about management based on putting the customer's needs first.
Ever since 1979, the Government have sought to free up the latent ability and commitment in our public services through improvements in the way in which they are managed. Initially this was done on what was essentially a pragmatic individual basis, as each one—the civil service, local government, the nationalised industries and the NHS —seemed to require. A great deal was achieved. Government withdrew altogether from many areas—especially the nationalised industries—which could demonstrably be better run by the private sector. As far as the rest of the public service was concerned, efficiency measures resulted in enormous savings—for instance, over £2 billion from the result of the efficiency scrutiny programme alone. The delegation or scrapping of unnecessary budgetary controls gave local managers the powers they needed to run their operations more effectively; and the incentive was provided to set and meet challenging targets in a wide range of areas.
The changes were essentially about getting modern management into public sector organisations. They now provide the means by which we can deliver the Prime Minister's citizens charter programme—the most far-reaching programme ever designed for driving up quality in public services. As I made clear yesterday when talking about the White Paper, for the first time since present-day concepts of public service began to emerge in the early decades of this century, we now have, through the charter, a commitment to improve and to maintain on a systematic and comprehensive basis standards of service and efficiency throughout the public sector, linked to mechanisms that can deliver them. I was grateful for the basic commitment of the hon. Member for Redcar to the programme and to the policy, although she has criticisms of the detail.

Mr. Michael Bates: Would my right hon. Friend care to compare the constructive and helpful remarks made by the hon. Member for Redcar (Ms. Mowlem) in Committee yesterday when she welcomed the citizens charter, with those of the Leader of the Opposition who, when the charter was introduced, described it as banal and damaging?

Mr. Waldegrave: The hon. Member for Redcar, perhaps persuaded by my hon. Friend's eloquent argument and by my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary, Office of Public Service and Science, may have come to understand the programme better than her leader did. I am grateful for the bipartisan spirit in which she approaches the matter.

Ms. Marjorie Mowlam: Does the Minister agree that the hon. Member for Langbaurgh (Mr. Bates) cannot decide whether he was in the House or in Committee yesterday? We did not discuss the citizens charter in Committee yesterday. In the House yesterday —either the Minister or the hon. Member for Langbaurgh


may like to check the record—I said that the citizens charter was a good idea in principle. I said that we invented the idea and that many Labour local authorities introduced such charters before the Minister even thought of the idea. I also said that it was the way in which the Government had introduced the charter that made it a sham.

Mr. Waldegrave: I would not expect the hon. Lady to argue that my party could carry out principles better than her party. There would be little point in her being here if she did not believe that she could do a better job of it. I welcome in the spirit in which it was offered the commitment that we share the principle of wanting to improve public service. The hon. Lady says, as is her right, that she would carry out the charter provisions better. The citizens charter contains sensible commitments and I welcome the hon. Lady's reaffirmation of that point.

Mr. Hugh Bayley: Will the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster go one stage further in the bipartisan spirit displayed in the Chamber this afternoon? Will he pay tribute to the first public authority in Britain to introduce a citizens charter? York city council has now operated its charter for five years. Each year, it has done what the right hon. Gentleman did yesterday—produce an annual report on the progress of the charter. Will the right hon. Gentleman pay tribute to that Labour authority, which was the first to introduce a citizens charter?

Mr. Waldegrave: I certainly agree that what has been done in York is interesting. We would argue that the York charter should contain more measurable performance indicators. I make no apology. I warn the Labour party that, if it produces good ideas, we shall pinch them. There is nothing wrong with that. I shall give arguments later to show that some Labour party supporters and centre-left opinion—I shall not offend centre-left Labour Members who sit below the Gangway, as they have temporarily left the Chamber—share our approach to these matters, and I welcome that.
We saw one significant result of this radical programme of reform only last week—

Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours: Where's the beef?

Mr. Waldegrave: The hon. Gentleman had a large amount of beef last week when my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education published for the first time full tables of examination results as the parents charter had promised would be done. The Labour party's reaction to that example of openness earned it some noteworthy press coverage. The Sunday Times concluded:
Labour is a lost cause on education.
That is hardly surprising. As more than 50 per cent. of Labour Members are sponsored by trade unions, the Labour party is pretty much a lost cause in any area in which a consumer voice is struggling to be heard. Among others, The Guardian concluded:
the information will allow parents to make a more informed choice. No democrat should regard this as a reverse.
On this occasion, I wholeheartedly agree with The Guardian.
The White Paper is a substantial milestone in demonstrating how we are moving towards public services with high-quality outputs and with service to the citizen as an overriding concern. However, as the White Paper

states, better-quality services do not happen by accident. They are being brought about by a series of policies each of which is designed to serve a key objective in improving public service management.
First, we must ensure that those working in the public services are not employed at taxpayers' expense on activities that, viewed realistically, do not need to exist at all. It is the most difficult thing in the world to abolish a function once a bureaucracy has made it its own, but it should be done sometimes.
Secondly, we believe that public services should be engaged only in activities that really need to be in the public sector. That requires regular programmes of review to discover whether all activities need to remain in the public sector. Many do not.

Mr. Campbell-Savours: Can the Minister explain how I should respond to a group of people whom I have just met in the Central Lobby? They tell me that they work for the Inland Revenue and that they deal with the most private aspects of people's tax affairs. They told me that their work as typists is to be put out to a private company. The most intimate details of people's tax affairs will be dealt with by people who work for a private company in he north of England.
I heard that some Inland Revenue officers are so worried about that prospect—there has been a pilot project somewhere—that tax inspectors are now sending hand-written letters to ensure that correspondence is not typed by private firms. Is not that an absolute disgrace? Are not the Government abdicating their responsibilities by handing over that important work to private contractors whom the public will not trust on matters of privacy?

Mr. Waldegrave: The hon. Gentleman is wrong at two levels. First, at the lesser, but none the less powerful, level, the criminal law covers confidentiality in these matters. Secondly, the contractual arrangements that would be made in such a case would have to cover the question of confidentiality.
More broadly, the hon. Gentleman is falling into the mirror image of the mistake that some on the right have made in the past. It is just as foolish a mistake that way round. The hon. Gentleman says, "Private sector bad, cannot be trusted", just as some Conservatives used to say that nothing in the public sector was good. Both attitudes are wrong and the hon. Gentleman is out of date in his attitude.
On reflection, Opposition Members who are sponsored by trade unions that have a mostly private sector membership will not agree with the hon. Gentleman that people in the private sector cannot be trusted with confidential matters. That is an unusually foolish argument from the hon. Gentleman.

Mr. Matthew Taylor: There is real concern, as I am sure the Minister accepts, about confidentiality and the Inland Revenue. It is commonly accepted that, if something is not broken, it should be mended. In this case, I am not aware of any problem about confidentiality. However, as revealed on the front pages of The Sun and the Evening Standard today, there are problems of confidentiality in the private sector with Access. I am sure that Access does all that it can to maintain confidentiality.
I think it is disgraceful that information has come out. The Inland Revenue has kept confidentiality. If it is not broken, why mend it?

Mr. Waldegrave: I share the hon. Gentleman's sense of disgust about the leak from Access. It is not wholly unknown for the public sector more broadly—I am not talking about the Inland Revenue—occasionally to leak things. Nobody is criticising the standard of confidentiality in the Inland Revenue. None the less, it is right to look at public services and to see whether the same quality can be achieved at better value for money for the taxpayer. That is the right thing to do in that area as in others—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Workington, who continues to mutter from a sedentary position, knows a little about the nuclear industry. He knows perfectly well that, over the years, many highly confidential matters in that industry, as in the public sector, have been handled by private sector companies.
I repeat that we believe that public services should be engaged only in activities that should really be in the public sector. So far, 46 major activities and many smaller ones have been privatised; they range from huge industries such as steel and telecommunications, to the National Freight Corporation—at the time of its privatisation a declining business, now an internationally quoted company—and from the 17 electricity companies in Great Britain to the British Technology Group.
As a result, 920,000 jobs have passed from the public to the private sector. Even leaving aside all the benefits to the taxpayer of more efficient services, the annual charge that nationalised industries' financing makes on the Exchequer was £3·5 billion per annum less in 1991–92 than in 1979. That achievement has already largely ended the historically short and aberrant detour into nationalisation, which helped discredit the state by casting it in the role of the incompetent owner and manager of huge, inefficient and often out-of-date industries, and as the protector of powerful producer interests rather than the champion of the individual citizen.
I quote from the excellent speech on Monday to the Centre for Policy Studies by my hon. Friend the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, whom we welcome to our proceedings:
in 1979 Government was an oil producer, a car maker and a steel maker".
We are not any more, and we were not very good at it when we were. It seems a long time ago.
Novertheless, we have not yet finished. The White Paper lists 11 further substantial potential candidates for privatisation, ranging from British Rail to Companies House, and my hon. Friend the Financial Secretary has recently opened discussions with colleagues to identify the scope for further developing the successful privatisation programme of the past decade, as he said earlier this week in the speech from which I have just quoted.
Thirdly, we believe in encouraging a productive partnership wherever possible—

Mr. David Trimble: The right hon. Gentleman refers to activities that it was appropriate to move out of the state sector. I am sure that he will agree that there are some activities for which privatisation is quite inappropriate and which should not be moved out of the public sector. When the present Secretary of State for

Northern Ireland was the Attorney-General, he said that among the things that should not be moved out of core governmental work was work relating to national security or with other specially sensitive implications.
In that context, will the right hon. Gentleman comment on the recent decision of the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland to approve market testing of security work carried out for members of the public in Northern Ireland who are regarded as being under a particular terrorist threat? Does the right hon. Gentleman regard it as appropriate that that activity, which is especially sensitive and which relates to national security, should now be moved out of the core of Government?

Mr. Waldegrave: Doubtless my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland will observe closely the conditions that the hon. Gentleman has quoted back at him. It is impossible for me to assess a particular case, but such considerations must certainly be high on the list that it would be proper for the Secretary of State to have before him when considering contracting any such activities out. It must be right to emphasise that.

Mr. Ian Davidson: The Minister said that he wanted to clarify the activities that needed to be undertaken in the public sector and the activities that could be moved to the private sector: some activities could be moved while others could not. Does he agree that he is assuming that things should automatically go out to the private sector unless they have to be kept in the public sector? He is not saying, "Let us consider whether activities can better be undertaken in the public or the private sector." He is starting from the assumption that it is better for them to be out of the public sector. That does not give those providing services in the public sector a fair chance of competing. The right hon. Gentleman is weighing the balance ideologically.

Mr. Waldegrave: The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. He has not quite understood my position, and it is helpful that he has given me an opportunity to clarify it. Where a policy decision is taken that the state is involved in an activity in which it need not be involved, that is a proper activity for privatisation, but where the policy decision is that responsibility should remain with the state and accountability should remain with Ministers, it is right to market-test, but there must be, and must be seen to be, a level playing field between in-house potential bidders and any out-of-house contractors. I shall come to some assurances on that in a moment.
There are matters in which public and private sectors can co-operate. Obvious potential candidates are transport and construction, and my right hon. Friend the Chancellor announced in his autumn statement measures to stimulate such partnerships.
At the same time, there are other opportunities for a constructive and efficient partnership. Some activities may still clearly need to be the ultimate responsibility of the public sector, as I said to the hon. Member for Glasgow, Govan (Mr. Davidson), but can be contracted out none the less. The process of deciding whether contracting out will he the most efficient way of carrying out a function is called market testing. It works by putting the function in question out to competitive tender, with internal and external bids assessed against the same criteria. That is another key approach in our reforms of public service management. In some respects, local government is ahead


of central Government in applying it; yet, like privatisation, it has relevance to a wide range of Government activities.
Results so far are encouraging, as the benefits of the process are twofold: first, it is axiomatic that where an activity is market-tested and an external bid succeeds, it will be because we can get the quality of service we need at better value for money than under the current method of provision; secondly, where an in-house bid succeeds, the process of opening up that public sector activity to competition in itself often creates opportunities for greater effectiveness. Consequently, in central Government, savings arising from market testing, at any rate in its initial stages, have typically been around 25 per cent. of the original cost even where the activity has remained in-house.
Elsewhere in the public service, much has been going on; in the NHS, market testing has been mandatory in some support areas since 1983. In 1990–91, that produced savings of over £120 million, as well as other benefits through improved management and service standards.
In the services provided by local government, compulsory competitive tendering to stimulate greater efficiency and to secure better value through competition between in-house organisations and private contractors has been going on for many years, and, as studies by the Audit Commission and INLOGOV have shown, has produced savings of, for instance, up to 15 per cent. in building cleaning and 10 per cent. in refuse collection, with improvements in the clarity and objectiveness of contract standards.
That is a valuable start, but, as I said, market testing, particularly in central Government, is still at an early stage. The White Paper makes it clear that the targets agreed for market testing for central Government activities in the period until September 1993 are enormously more ambitious than anything undertaken so far. Targets have been set for more than 20 Government Departments covering activities valued at about £1·5 billion—a more than fiftyfold increase over last year's targets.
Those activities, which the White Paper lists, range from building and estate management to internal audit, from typing services and pensions administration to information technology and training. The list clearly shows that the scope for contracting out has moved beyond the longer-established examples of support services such as catering and cleaning to activities that have traditionally been somewhat more protected from comparison with the outside world.

Mr. Trimble: The Minister is talking about contracting out—or the possibility of contracting out—to the private sector a whole range of activities in addition to those that he mentioned earlier. Has he considered the implications of bids coming from the private sector outside the United Kingdom? With the single market and modern communications, and given that back office work can be located some distance away, a significant amount of that work—particularly that of a more general clerical nature —could be contracted out to people outside the United Kingdom. Are the Government aware of the problem, and are they likely to introduce safeguards to protect against it?

Mr. Waldegrave: I think that I am right in saying that we would breach European Community single market rules if we did not advertise such contracts in the European Community journal. There is nothing new about that. When I first arrived in the Environment Department as a junior Minister, all the rate support grant work of the sort that the House debated after the Secretary of State's statement earlier this afternoon was done on American computers and bounced back over the Atlantic off satellites, because there were no computers in Britain which were big enough to handle it, which seems rather extraordinary. So there is nothing new about this.
The possibility raised by the hon. Member for Govan is conceivably real, although I doubt that it will be real in terms of the sort of work that he has specified. It is more likely that foreign-owned companies might win part of the work, but I do not think that there is any objection to that.

Mr. Davidson: rose—

Mr. Trimble: rose—

Mr. Waldegrave: I must get on. Perhaps the hon. Member for Upper Bann (Mr. Trimble) wants to intervene once more.

Mr. Trimble: The Minister says that he does not think the problem will he serious. I assure him that it may be a serious problem for Northern Ireland, which has the only land frontier in the United Kingdom. I do not think that he should discount the extent of the problem in the south of England. The continent is not that far away.

Mr. Waldegrave: The benefit of the single market is that we are part of the continent, according to my political perception. The single market works both ways. It is possible for private sector companies to get work from other countries. I have no doubt that some of them get work from the United Kingdom or from other Governments in Europe.

Mr. Davidson: Does the Minister agree that there is a genuine danger that data processing work could end up going to other parts of the world? Is he aware that a company in the Philippines has bid for data processing work for the Metropolitan police? As I understand it, the company meets all the criteria. That puts a different slant on the Government's dispersal policy. The Government have a view on dispersing civil service and Government work from the south-east of England. I am in favour of that because I should like to see work dispersed to areas such as mine, not to areas such as the Philippines. Does the Minister agree that there is a genuine danger under his policy that work will go to all the airts and pairts, not to areas to which the Government would want it to go?

Mr. Waldegrave: The hon. Gentleman is scaring himself unnecessarily. I believe that he is a sensible man. He, like hon. Members on this side, has argued passionately for the ratification of a GATT agreement to free international trade. One of the results of freeing international trade is that such trade takes place, and that must be welcomed. It is unlikely that there would be international trade in software, because the British software industry is extremely strong. However, if we have international trade in software, we must judge the benefit of such trade to the consumer and to citizens against other considerations.
We should not frighten ourselves too much. After all, local government, which has undertaken competitive tendering for years, has not yet managed to transfer all its work to the Philippines, as far as I know.
I know that public service employees, the unions, Opposition Members and, indeed, those on the left in politics often express opposition to market testing. The view is not unanimous. Among those who have paid tribute to the opportunities and results of market testing are contributors to the Institute for Public Policy Research/Trades Union Congress publication "Meeting Needs in the 1990s" who acknowledge:
There have been gains from Government legislation…the councillors had organised services but they had never specified what those services had to achieve. Now they have had to make the governmental decision—they have had to choose what standards of service they want".
Two years later we find the general secretary of the Federated Union of Managerial and Professional Officers in local government writing in The Times:
there is no doubt that it
compulsory competitive tendering—
sharpens up the way that we manage services".
Nevertheless, people continue to be concerned. Some of that concern comes from defence of the existing status quo and an unwillingness to see whether services can be better provided—indeed, from traditional producer vested interests. I cannot deal with that concern, but some concern comes from misunderstanding and can be addressed.

Ms. Mowlam: It would be helpful if the Minister did not continue to quote selectively from documents. The conference of the IPPR/TUC to which he referred acknowledged that there were some pluses for examining efficiency through market testing. However, it did not follow the Minister's logic on the concept of contracting out as one option and privatisation as another. Equally, many local authorities, including Mr. Jeremy Beecham from Newcastle—whom the Minister seems to quote all the time—voluntarily acknowledged the value of competitive tendering before the Government put the other C in front to make it compulsory.

Mr. Waldegrave: That is no more or less than what I was saying. I was not claiming support for privatisation; I had departed from that part of my speech. I was claiming support for the process of competitive tendering, which, as the hon. Lady confirmed, is widespread among some local authorities—although, I must say, not all.
Let me deal with some of the concerns which I may be able to put to rest. Although the White Paper sets clear targets for the amount of Government activity which is to be contracted out, it would be meaningless to set such targets because we have no preconceived view of whether any particular function can be more cost-effectively provided in-house or on a contracted-out basis. The result in each case will depend on the outcome of the competitive tendering process. So there is no hidden agenda. The House well knows that, when we believe it is right to privatise, we do so. We have no need for hidden agendas. Market testing is first and foremost a management reform within the continuing public sector.
Let there be no doubt that what we are talking about here is the explanation of functions to see whether they can be carried out more cost-effectively in partnership with the

private sector. Those functions are, by implication, activities which are considered to be essential. They will still be carried out—and carried out better than before this exercise. The work and the jobs needed to do it will continue to exist. Even when the market testing of an activity results in a contract being placed with the private sector, Government employees may be redeployed or taken on by the new contractor. That has happened in the vast majority of cases over the last four years.
In addition, let me make it clear that Departments which achieve savings through market testing and contracting out will be able to apply those savings for the benefit of their programmes. This policy was set out in the "Competing for Quality" White Paper which launched market testing in the civil service last year. It has not changed.
There will, of course, still be very substantial areas of activity which, after review, it is agreed should be left in the public sector and still be carried out by the public sector. We aim to improve management standards by looking for other ways of exerting an equivalent discipline to that of competition. Indeed, it is essential that we do so, since, when there is no choice, the supplier has a greater, not a lesser, responsibility to the customer.
Much is being done to promote better management in these areas. We are getting decent financial management systems in public services. We have now established in most public services proper purchaser/provider relationships as the basis for their operations. We have freed managers to use their delegated budgetary powers to buy services wherever they can find the best deal for their customers.
The creation of executive agencies has had a dramatic effect on Civil Service management. The agencies are run by chief executives who are usually appointed by open competition, ensuring we have the best person for the job from inside or outside the civil service. All agencies have published framework documents setting out key objectives, responsibilities and targets, set annually by Ministers and monitored by them. They have published annual reports and accounts and, in many cases, corporate and business plans. About half of all civil servants now work in executive operations run on those lines. By 1995, that number could he as high as three quarters. That means that, within a few years, the civil service is likely to consist of a relatively small policy-making core, and a series of devolved delivery organisations. Some of them will, by themselves, be as large as or larger than the core and will be expected to focus increasingly on their customers.
The citizens charter White Paper shows that agencies are indeed delivering a better service to their customers. Services are now being delivered quicker: for example, the Driving Standards Agency has reduced waiting times for a driving test to just over five weeks as against 13 weeks in 1988, and the average time for issue of a passport by the United Kingdom Passport Agency has come down from 3·5 weeks in 1988 to seven days. Agencies are carrying out research to find out what their customers want and agencies like Companies House and the Public Record Office have introduced longer opening hours in response to public demand. All agencies now publish full information on their activities and the way that taxpayers' money is being used in their annual reports and accounts.
Next week I shall be publishing the third annual review of the next steps programme, which will give detailed information on all the agencies set up so far and other


organisations established on a next steps basis, together with information about future candidates and an overview of the effectiveness of the programme as a whole. This so-called next steps structure opens up the opportunity for delegation of managerial responsibility and accountability to a degree that had previously been impossible. The central Departments will be the more able to help agencies take advantage of this opportunity under the enabling provisions of the Civil Service (Management Functions) Bill which has just finished its Committee stage.
Of course, the operations of the delivery organisations —the executive agencies—may in time suggest further scope for change and improvement. I am concerned to establish an adequate balance between stability and the need to take advantage of further developments. Once an agency has been set up, the question whether privatisation has become a serious possibility should be considered during the review of the framework document—usually after three years of operation. If privatisation has become a serious possibility, it should be investigated fully. If agency status is confirmed once the review is completed, people will have reasonable security from further upheavals ahead of them.
Thus, we are setting in place throughout the public service a clear structure of management by service agreement, with Departments purchasing from private or public sector, the services that the public need against charter principles and charter targets. That that is the right way forward is again not just a view from the right. The former general secretary of the Fabian Society, who writes in the current edition of the Fabian Review argues:
the model developed in the NHS reforms of splitting the function of purchasers from that of provider should be applied throughout the public services".
That is my objective too.
Finally, the citizens charter underpins and links all the different initiatives that I have described.

Mr. Frank Field: The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster says that he is reaching the end of his speech, and I must express some disappointment about one subject that he has missed. He began in good style, reminding us of the events of the winter of discontent. It is crucial for Opposition Members—as it is for Conservative Members—to say that such behaviour is totally unacceptable and that we have no intention of allowing such developments again. Without doing so, we stand little chance of success. The right hon. Gentleman also made much of the importance of the customer in services and that is right because it is proper in principle and because there are a lot of votes in it—we should not think that that means that it is a wrong principle.
During the past 14 years, the Government's attitude to people who work in the public sector has changed. Many such workers, including my constituents, feel that, rather than first-class, they have been made third or fourth-class citizens. The right hon. Gentleman is far too civilised to make statements similar to those that his colleagues have made about people who deliver services. Does he care to comment on how he values public sector workers, and on the fact that in any discussion of improvements in the delivery of services—which is crucial—a secondary but important matter is how we treat and pay our staff?
I listened to the Chancellor, but when he talked about improving services he never mentioned what he will do about some of the appallingly low wages in the public

sector. As part of the process of more open government, will he tell us how many public sector workers still earn wages which qualify them for family credit?

Mr. Waldegrave: I shall write to the hon. Gentleman with the factual answer to his last question.
In the earlier part of my speech I paid tribute—perhaps too briefly—to workers in the public sector. It is difficult to do so without it sounding like a cliché, but my tribute was real and the hon. Gentleman's point is well taken. I tried to argue that case with the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours). It is just as foolish to say that all private sector workers are bad as it is to say that all public sector workers are bad. If some Conservative Members hold the latter view, they are mistaken—just as the few Opposition Members who held the opposite view, and who persecuted the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field) in his constituency, are wrong.
The citizens charter programme gives the Conservative party and the Government the opportunity to reaffirm their commitment to the need for long-term public services. I was happy to join the hon. Member for Redcar to make that commitment yesterday, and to pay tribute to those who work in the service. I do not believe that that relieves us—the public sector—from the relentless pursuit of efficiency in the interests of the services that we provide. I know that the hon. Member for Birkenhead would not think that it did. Therefore, I respond warmly to his invitation to pay tribute again to public sector workers. They are not third or fourth-class citizens, and they are both providers and consumers of the services that we are trying to improve.
The principles of the charter—standards, information and openness, choice and consultation, courtesy and helpfulness, redress for mistakes, and value for money—are especially important in those areas of Government which are not subject to ordinary competitive pressures. The more we devolve management responsibility, the more explicit we must make the public service principles and ethos that we want to run through all those devolved organisations.
Hon. Members will find, both in the first report on the charter, and in the many individual published charters, innumerable specific examples of how those principles are being implemented. The more we establish throughout the public service the new structure of management by clear service agreement—whether contract, framework agreement or internal service-level agreement—the more powerful the mechanism becomes for delivering those charter standards and ensuring better public service provision.
I hope that I have made clear to the House the nature and scale of the changes and improvements that the Government have, and are continuing to introduce in to the public service. I also hope that Opposition Members will be able to move beyond their sterile belief that, if only some huge but usually unspecified increase in resources could be made available and given to existing provider organisations, all would be well. Poor services do not come free or cheap either, as was discovered in the 1960s and 1970s. For any given level of resources, it is always possible to provide better services, which are more cost-effective and more responsive to the needs of the citizen and customer. It is the Government's constant and fundamental aim to ensure that that happens.

Ms. Marjorie Mowlam: I welcome the debate. It would be churlish of me not to do so, since I asked for it and the Minister granted it so quickly. He would have been disingenuous if he had not known when he granted it that the Government were going to publish the citizens charter White Paper the day before, so it allows time for another four or six hours of debate on the matter in the House.
I am pleased that, in answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field), the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster acknowledged his support for public sector workers. Charming though he may be at times, his colleagues are not charming to the public sector, which causes great concern to the many people who work in it. I am sad that he could not express such charitable views on local authorities. The right hon. Gentleman said that he found the work that York he had been doing interesting. It would have done him no harm to say that York and many other local authorities did a good job on charters in response to quality services before he or the Prime Minister dreamed of nicking our idea. That would have been a positive step.
As the right hon. Gentleman keeps trying to cosy up in this debate and to say how often the two sides of the House agree, it would be useful to put on record briefly the aspects of public services management about which we agree, or do not agree. First, both sides agree about the need for quality public services. Another point we have in common is that the Opposition also believe that a citizens charter is one mechanism to improve the quality of public sector services—we wrote about the concept before the Conservatives had even thought about it, and many local authorities implemented it before then.
We differ drastically with the Government about the mechanisms by which quality services are achieved. We believe that they are best achieved at the local level, with local accountability and with people being held accountable for the services that are offered by the local authoritiy or other local body.
The Government take the opposite position. They believe that quality services are achieved—the Minister said it more clearly than I have ever heard it said—by direct privatisation, by market testing as a precursor to considering an outside bid. That involves contracting out of the national civil service or the next steps executive agencies. Although the latter are at present operating at arm's length, in terms of their framework document, they could be privatised in the future.

Mr. Gyles Brandreth: Is the hon. Lady saying that she is totally opposed to market testing now and for all time, even if it is shown that savings of perhaps 25 per cent. could be achieved by using market testing? Those savings could be re-employed to improve the quality of the services.

Ms. Mowlam: I have no objection to the use of indicators of a quantitative and qualitative nature to test the services of a Government Department or local authority.

Mr. Brandreth: Oh?

Ms. Mowlam: The hon. Gentleman expresses surprise. Local authorities have been doing that for ages. They may not have put the same label as the Government on the

activity, but many efficient local authorities and other bodies have been doing it. So I agree with increased efficiency and the use of internal mechanisms to achieve it, and we can discuss many of them.
I disagree with the way in which the Government are hiding behind market testing and, instead of saying, "We are putting this out to competitive tender," are avoiding using that language. Had the Minister made the position clear and said that the Government were putting this or that out to competitive tender, large sections of the national civil service would have been aware of precisely what the Government were doing. People get a totally different view when the Minister says, "We shall do market tests and look at external contracts and so on," and dresses the whole thing up in language of that type.

Mr. Waldegrave: I said that market testing was the precursor, should outside bids be better, to contracting out. I am not sure that the hon. Lady answered my hon. Friend the Member for the City of Chester (Mr. Brandreth). Is she in favour of market testing as a mechanism?

Ms. Mowlam: I have no difficulty in looking for quality and efficiency of service using quantitative and qualitative indicators. I am not satisfied when market testing is put in the context used by the right hon. Gentleman today, which is in preparation for competitive tendering—[Interruption] Does the right hon. Gentleman find my remarks confusing? What is his problem?
The right hon. Gentleman described the competitive tendering which the Government are intent on implementing as taking place on a level playing field, and I hoped from what he said that he intended to describe the nature of the playing field, but he did not do that. I shall show how the playing field is far from level, which causes much of the problem. The Minister puts on a facade of citizens charter quality services, but beneath that lies his desire for a very different national civil service.

The parliamentary Secretary, Office of Public Service and Science (Mr. Robert Jackson): The hon. Lady is discussing an important and interesting point and I am unclear about precisely what she is saying about her attitude and that of the Opposition to market testing. She said that she was in favour of market testing, except in the context of competitive tendering. Is she aware that market testing and competitive tendering are absolutely integrally related? I hope that she will clarify the point. We shall make considerable progress if she does.

Ms. Mowlam: Let us stay with the point until it is resolved.

Mr. Frank Field: What is my hon. Friend against?

Ms. Mowlam: I shall tell my hon. Friend what I am against. We are against compulsory competitive tendering if it represents the privatisation of our national civil service. Once that has been privatised and there is trouble with contracts that have been put out to competitive tender, there will be nothing left of the civil service to which to complain. If those responsible make some of the mistakes that local authorities have made, where shall we go from there? There will not be a national civil service to deliver what the citizens have a right to demand.
It is important to appreciate precisely what I am saying, because many Opposition Members have experience of


local government and know what delivering quality service is about. We believe in having the ability to measure efficient quality so that, for example, cost centres in local government can be compared. We can thereby reveal efficient ways to improve a service.
In that context, it is still a public service and it is accountable to the citizen. The service has not been contracted out or privatised, at which stage it is not accountable to anybody but is run by private companies which are driven by the profit motive and which believe in short-termism. Their activities are certainly not based on the long-term interests of the people.

Mr. Davidson: Does my hon. Friend agree that market testing is being used by the Government artificially to divide the various functions of Government—for example, by taking the clerical services out of a general activity and creating sub-units which are tendered in a disruptive manner and in such a way that the various sections are not able to come together to provide a unified whole and a better service? That is market testing designed to disrupt and destroy a service rather than enabling like with like to be compared on an external basis.

Ms. Mowlam: I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, which helps to show why the national civil service and local authorities, as they have functioned in the past, are important.

Mr. Robert Jackson: It becomes clear that the hon. Lady is in favour of market testing on the basis that no contract is awarded to any outside bidder.

Ms. Mowlam: We have discussed matters of this type time and again. We want a national civil service that is part of the nation's heritage. We want it to be efficient and to deliver what the people need—[interruption] The Chancellor of the Duchy seems to find that amusing. What we are debating is crucial to the future of our nation. We must have a civil service that delivers to the people the quality services to which they are entitled.
We accept the need for increased efficiency. That involves having indicators and testing, nationally or decentralised, to achieve the delivery of quality services. But it is clear from the Minister's remarks that the Government do not believe in a national civil service. They want it divided up into next steps agencies, privatised or, in some limited cases, remaining with Government. That would give us a totally different animal from what we want for the future.
We accept that it may be necessary for a Department to contract out the odd service. I have explained that local authorities have been doing that for years. A small rural local authority will contract out, say, its legal system because it is more cost-effective. The Government have not given a democratic choice for people to achieve that type of accountability at the local level. Their plan is compulsory, even though the Minister talks about the way in which it would be a good idea to decentralise certain matters. He says that national Government should not dictate. What is compulsory competitive tendering?
It is not as though the right hon. Gentleman is allowing local authorities the right to decide what services to run and how to run them. Local authorities have elections to make them accountable. Instead of having the ability to

choose, they are being told that compulsory competitive tendering must be the way forward. That is the degree of centralised control that the Minister is imposing on them.
I hope I have explained the view of the Opposition to the satisfaction of Conservative Members. There are certain crucial differences between the two sides of the House. We believe in local accountability, while Conservative Members do not. We believe in quality services and that they cannot be achieved simply by privatisation. I will give some examples to show why privatisation is not the answer.
As I listened to the Chancellor of the Duchy, I presumed that he had again been reading the book from which he often quotes, "Reinventing Government" by Gaebler and Osborne. The Library copy has gone missing, so it is difficult for me to check whether the structure of what the right hon. Gentleman is proposing is in conformity with that publication. If he has it, we would welcome its return to the Library.
My hon. Friends and I have a commitment to the public sector which the Government do not have. The right hon. Gentleman said at the conclusion of his remarks that he agreed that the public sector was important. If he believes in the future of the public sector, I should appreciate it if he and the Financial Secretary would distance themselves from the Treasury and say that they disagree with the Treasury document issued in 1991 called "Selling Services into Wider Markets". That document states:
The Government's policy is to restrict the size of the public sector and in general the presumption is that services should wherever possible be provided by the private sector rather than the public sector…This presumption applies in particular where a public body would be competing with the private sector".
I presume that when the Minister says, as he did today and yesterday, that he wants to continue with the public sector, he disagrees with the Treasury.

Mr. Waldegrave: When the civil service trade unions used that quotation to make the same point, I wrote to the Financial Times—the hon. Lady may have seen my letter —making it clear that that guidance is about the completely different subject of trading. It is no secret that the Government and, I suspect, the modern Labour party are against state trading. If there is a trading activity, the presumption is that it should be in the private sector. If state organisations want to expand their trading, they cannot do it on the basis of their privileged access to public sector borrowing but should be privatised.

Ms. Mowlam: Then the Minister will distance himself from his statement to The Times conference in June, when he stated clearly that he believed that the private sector was superior to the public sector in delivering services. The Minister cannot have it both ways. He keeps saying that the public sector is far superior and that he wants to keep it, but when we get down to the detail of what the Government want, we find that they want to privatise the public sector.
As I have tried to explain to Ministers, the private sector model cannot be imported into the public sector because the private sector is driven primarily by profits and short termism. It is demand-led to satisfy the customer. In a demand-led system with limited resources—the public sector—one most decide between the allocation of resources, make political decisions and be


held accountable. Local democracy and public sector services are important because it is crucial for the public sector to remain in control.
The Minister said that both sides of the House agree on the citizens charter, but the Labour party holds a different concept of the citizens charter. The Minister's view of the citizens charter is that individuals who pay council or poll tax receive services in return. That is a direct contract, just as in the private sector, between the individual and the local authority.
The difference is that the Labour party views the citizens charter more broadly, believing that citizens have rights and that they support services which they do not necessarily use. I have no children but I believe that local authorities should provide services for children. Similarly, I believe that community care, such as care for the elderly, should be provided by local authorities. That is not a direct contractual relationship between individual and provider, which is how the Government perceive the citizens charter. It is a fundamental difference in belief about the role of the individual in relation to the community.
For the Labour party, citizens' rights are not just about the consumer contracts which the Government are trying to provide but about access to information and choice, and equal treatment. We consider those matters to be crucial, which is why we find the Government's hypocrisy so bad when they try to deny access and information to the individual. It was made clear yesterday in the discussion on legal aid. How can the Government say that they are interested in increasing access and information to the individual when they are taking people out of legal aid and allowing only the very rich or very poor to have a chance to use the legal system? No wonder the public are cynical about the Government's belief in the citizens charter and individual rights. For us, accountability is crucial.
Towards the end of his speech, the Minister said how efficiently next step agencies had been performing. I have a couple of statistics that contradict that. The right hon. Gentleman said that the agencies had met their financial targets and some of their standards. The quality targets for 1991 show that only 37 of 53 quality targets, 20 of 28 financial targets, and 28 of 38 efficiency targets were achieved. The Central Office of Information, the National Weights and Measures Laboratory, Vehicle Certification, and Veterinary Medicine achieved not a single quality target.
In answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead, the Minister said that pay in the next steps agencies remained comparable. Let us take, for example, the pay negotiations with Her Majesty's Stationery Office. The Treasury target of £4 million meant that the pay settlement for HMSO workers had to be delayed for four months because the agency could not meet the targets set by the Treasury and still pay the HMSO employees the amount that they had been promised. In the end, it was able to offer only 4·7 per cent., which was not the target set elsewhere.
The Minister's suggestion hat the next steps agencies are meeting those quality targets, that the service in the next steps agencies is up to scratch or that the workers are receiving a fair wage when they are taken out of the direct national civil service is belied by the facts.
The subject of ministerial accountability for next steps agencies has been discussed in the House on numerous occasions. The thousands of letters that Opposition Members receive about disability living allowance problems are legendary. I received a wonderful letter dated 12 November about a constituent in South Bank in Cleveland. We wrote to ask for compensation or an apology from the DLA agency and, after months of delay, that benefit agency finished its letter by saying:
Would you please convey to Mr. and Mrs.…my sincere apologies".
That is the degree of direct communication between the Department and individuals. If that is the quality service in next steps agencies which the Minister mentioned, the delays in which affect people surviving on minimal benefit under disability living, no wonder Opposition Members are cynical.
If the Minister is committed to quality public services, why cannot he understand—anybody in the private sector will tell him—that, when there is low staff morale and a constant air of uncertainty in an organisation—a sword of Damocles hanging over civil servants' heads day in and day out—we cannot achieve high quality services and encourage people to work efficiently. It undermines much of the good work that has been done in the civil service and civil servants' desire to improve the quality.
The Minister also discussed local authorities and, where contracting out had taken place, how the Audit Commission and the Institute of Local Government Studies had said that they had met their financial targets and therefore things were looking great. May I give some statistics which show that, although they may have met their financial targets, the quality of service that they offered was so poor that many of their contracts had to be cancelled and the service taken back in house.
For example, in the building cleaning section, 39 per cent. of contracts across local authorities are held by the private sector. There have been problems with more than a quarter of those contracts, leading to almost one in 10 of them being terminated. That compares with only 3·5 per cent. of the in-house contracts being terminated. In catering, the figures are similar, with 20 per cent. of contracts held by the private sector, a quarter of which have been terminated. Only 9 per cent. of contracts in the school meals service are held in the private sector, and there have been problems with almost half of that 9 per cent. Of the in-house contracts—the majority—only four were terminated. Some 28 per cent. of refuse collection contracts are held by the private sector, and there have been problems with 40 per cent. of them, compared with problems with only 12 per cent. of those awarded to in-house contractors.
With such a record, I do not know how the Minister can say that local authorities have delivered a quality service. Contracting out has produced not quality services but the exact opposite. In answer to a question from the hon. Member for Upper Bann (Mr. Trimble), the Minister said that certain services would never be contracted out or privatised. He said that services relating to security could fall into that category.
Security in the Ministry of Defence has been privatised. It started as far back as 1980. By 1988, the MOD had issued 16 contracts to guard 44 sites. They included—as I am sure the hon. Member for Upper Bann will remember—the Royal Marine barracks at Deal, where Reliance Ltd. was responsible for security. The IRA bombing in 1989


resulted in the deaths of 11 people. In the aftermath of that bombing, a House of Commons Select Committee report finally forced the Government to review the policy of privatising security. The Committee found that there was
too high a turnover of staff",
and it identified low pay—to return to the issue raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead—as a particular problem contributing to the breach of security. That is an example of a sector that the Minister said might not be privatised but where contracting out has produced unsatisfactory security arrangements.
Elsewhere in central Government, security is still being contracted out, despite the repeated experience of security companies failing to vet employees properly. The West Midlands police found that 20 per cent. of Burns International's applicants had criminal records. If we continue to privatise and contract out services when there are difficulties of low pay and poor security—as shown by the examples that I have given—we shall clearly face problems in obtaining the sort of services to which we are entitled.
Another example that the Minister gave in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Govan (Mr. Davidson) was computerisation. The Minister gave cases involving the many contracts that go out to external companies because the in-house computers are not big enough to deal with the demand. Electronic Data Systems was given contracts to run two of the huge new social security computers in 1989, although it had previously been sacked from the English, Scottish and Northern Ireland national boards for training nurses. The English board director said that a five-year contract worth £250,000 was cancelled because
we were unable to test the costings given to us by EDS and couldn't tell if we were getting value for money.
If we look in detail at each of the examples given to us by the Minister this afternoon—computerisation, security, local authorities—we see examples where contracting out has not delivered adequate services. One example not yet mentioned is that of Windsor castle. Let us consider the fire there. In preparation for the privatisation of the Property Services Agency, responsibility for fire protection of royal buildings was transferred to the royal household. Therefore, the fire at Windsor castle provides the prime example of where, if the property had remained in the public sector and the Property Services Agency, pre-privatisation, had been responsible, there might—it is difficult to prove—have been a different outcome.
The Government closed the Crown Suppliers, which was responsible for providing expert advise on fire protection—[Interruption.] The Financial Secretary to the Treasury giggles, but the Government could not privatise that service as nobody wanted to purchase it, so they closed it. Therefore, the people responsible for providing expert advice on fire protection were not available. Given the record of those two organisations, I hope that the Government will reconsider their plans to privatise English Heritage, the only organisation left with the skill and ability to deal with the problems at Windsor castle.
The Minister mentioned confidentiality. My hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) spoke of the Inland Revenue, and the fear that the same confidentiality as applies in the civil service would not remain. The Minister did not mention that today. On

previous occasions he has said that we are proud of the confidentiality and impartiality of the national civil service.
It would be useful if the Minister could explain the position were the Inland Revenue to be privatised. He mentioned criminal proceedings occurring "after the fact". What use is it to have confidential and price-sensitive information at the Inland Revenue if, when it is privatised, that information is then available for potential leaks to companies? In a takeover, that could make a crucial difference. It is no good stating that criminal proceedings would result, as that would be after the fact, and would be of no help to those involved in the takeover.
The secretarial and information technology services of the Inland Revenue are being put out to tender to private companies, which means that those companies will have access to the tax records of individuals and firms. A problem of confidentiality will obviously arise. Some high profile individuals and companies may have difficulty in keeping their records private.
It is interesting that Members' records are kept in a secure section—PD1—in Cardiff. It is unclear whether Members' tax returns will be privatised or put out to contract. If that section is excluded from privatisation, does it mean that the Government do not trust the private sector for Members' records but are happy to let private companies have access to everyone else's records? If Members' records are not excluded from privatisation, are Members aware that their tax and financial records are to be taken away from the civil service and placed in the hands of a private company?
Earlier today, the Minister said that he was disgusted that information on the Chancellor of the Exchequer's private finances had been leaked. I agree, but surely that provides a classic example of what can happen to confidentiality and impartiality when organisations are privatised. It is a living example on the front pages of most of today's newspapers, but it does not seem to cause concern to the Minister.

Mr. Alan Williams: That is the very point made by the unions at the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency. The agency's computer contains the criminal and medical records of people with driving licenses, which could be handed over to a private contractor.

Ms. Mowlam: I thank my hon. Friend as he has voiced our concern exactly. We are worried about the DVLA, which is why we have debated the issue a number of times in the House. We want to explain to Ministers that it is not simply a matter of privatisation, but involves obtaining quality service for individuals and our fears about the information that could come into the public domain as a result.
The Government are trying to skirt around another issue related to contracting out. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster did not mention it, but I am sure that his hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State will do so when he winds up the debate. I am speaking of the recent changes in the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 1981, forced on the Government by the European Court of Justice.
Ministers present and their colleagues on the Committee on the employment Bill are trying to brush aside the fact that their entire market testing programme


to date has sidestepped the acquired rights directive to rig the competition for contracts in favour of the private sector. The competition should be run on the basis of efficiency and best practice, but has been run on the basis of cuts in staff pay and conditions. That is why the Minister was being economical with the actualité when he said earlier that there would be a level playing field. When services have been contracted out, there has been a cut in staff pay and conditions. That is why the Government have avoided implementing the TUPE regulations. It is no good the Minister denying that.
The truth of my assertion is borne out by those people involved in contracting out who, when faced with the implementation of TUPE, have made the following comments. John Hall, the secretary of the Cleaning and Support Services Association, which represents contract cleaning companies, said of TUPE:
This will make tendering totally unattractive. It is staggering news. It is probably the most serious challenge ever to our industry and we will fight it tooth and nail.
Mr. Hall, who is also chairman of the Confederation of British Industry competing for quality committee, added:
If this clause goes on the statute book then there will be little point in our members getting involved in public sector tendering.
So it would be useful to find out about the situation with regard to TUPE. I can assure the Minister that a number of people will be taking it to the European Court if the Government try to wriggle out of it again.
On another point of clarification—my penultimate point, Mr. Deputy Speaker—I am pleased that the Financial Secretary finds that good news. I hope that he listens with as much generosity and openness when other people's jobs are put on the line as a result of this Government's policies. Those people will join the unemployment queues, and he sits there completely satisfied with the kind of policies and unemployment that this Government have brought about. I find the arrogance of Ministers like him appalling.

Mr. Ian Taylor: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Have you noticed that the Financial Secretary to the Treasury has been here throughout the debate?

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Morris): As I have not been in the Chair for the whole of the debate, I cannot comment, but I understand that that is the case and I am sure that it has been recorded accordingly.

Ms. Mowlam: I readily acknowledge that the Financial Secretary has been here all the time. I did not deny that. I simply suggested that his attitude was arrogant when we were talking about people's jobs being under threat. That is a completely different point.
Will the Minister undertake this evening—the Minister skated over this point—to guarantee that there will always be an in-house bid for services to be contracted out? The "competing for quality" document failed to give this assurance and I believe that, in the interests of fair and open competition, the Minister ought to give it tonight. It was implied in Committee that, if there was an in-house bid, it would be accepted, and in order to be fair to employees in the civil service departments, if the Government goes ahead, there should be such an assurance.
It would also be appreciated if some assurance could be given that, if certain Departments are contracted out, there will be regulations to ensure that commercial interests are not involved. For example, if the present status of the Office of Fair Trading changes and it goes to a private contractor, there should be an assurance that the private contractor who gets the job could not have an interest in the work of the Office of Fair Trading. Quite clearly, such regulations would need to be put in place.
We believe that the citizens charter is part of the Government's plans, along with market testing, for cutting costs and—this is a crucial point—transferring responsibility for sometimes poor quality public services to individual managers and workers, who cannot hope to influence change on the scale required. Quality services require guaranteed adequate resources and highly motivated and well trained staff. The Government claim that the charter upholds the principle of free choice; the only principle guiding the Government is that the private sector knows best. Where is the choice for an individual who cannot change the person who empties the dustbins or the person who deals with tax matters?
The Opposition believe in the future of the public sector and in the quality of public services. We believe that the way in which the Government have handled the citizens charter is a cynical facade to cover the sustained destruction of the public sector and the wholesale transfer of many of its assets and responsibilities away from the citizen to private sector. That is not for the benefit of the citizens of this country.

Mr. Michael Lord: I am very pleased to take part in this important debate. In a sense, the two opening speeches have summed up the dilemma. In my view, the solution to many of these problems is for us somehow to achieve the kind of efficiency that one sees in the best private companies, without necessarily going through the process of privatising those parts of government that do not really lend themselves sensibly to privatisation.
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the citizens charter and his excellent initiatives and on much of the privatisation that has taken place so far, but sometimes, sound government, both local and central, is better than new legislation in helping us to cope with many of our problems. It is the quality of leadership and management in the public service that is crucial. Before changing structures, whether of local government, the health service or education, we ought to examine carefully why existing structures are not working—structures which until now, perhaps, have worked well and stood the test of time. As I have already said, some services do not lend themselves readily to privatisation.
The key, surely, to all this is leadership and responsibility at every level of the public service, with the Government themselves displaying those qualities as well as holding firmly to account those charged with delivering services to the public. The way in which men and women carry out their duties may be influenced largely by the leadership they are given within the structure in which they work. Perhaps some of our existing structures are now unworkable and have come to the end of their useful lives,


but perhaps not. Many of them have developed and have been tried and tested, and we should give careful thought to each before changing them.
I shall give a few examples of issues which are of concern to me. The water industry has been privatised. I do not say that that is a bad thing, because I appreciate the problems in raising capital to fund much of the work that is needed. However, I am greatly concerned that enforcement, where people were polluting our waterways, was not carried out as it should have been and, as a result, many of our rivers and streams are badly polluted. Why was there not that enforcement? Why, over all those years, did the people responsible for ensuring that industries did not tip their waste into our rivers allow those industries to carry on doing just that? The responsibility lies not only with the individual who is charged with visiting those companies but with his manager and, at the end of the day, the very senior individuals in the water authorities whose job it was to make sure that rivers were not polluted. Why was that allowed to go on? Why were those responsible not brought to task?
We are now in the business of reorganising the health service. We have done that before. We had districts, which have now gone, we now have our regions and our areas. I believe that the present reorganisation will be helpful, but I want to ask one or two questions about other aspects of the health service.
I well remember talking many years ago to a consultant in the health service. He shocked me by displaying total disregard for any responsibility in his hospital for efficiency or waste—waste which he knew was taking place on a daily basis to the tune of tens of thousands of pounds. He saw it as no part of his responsibility as a medical consultant to do anything about it.
I have been particularly keen over the years to have matrons brought back into our hospitals. I wonder why they ever went. Matrons were brilliant at their job. They knew how to deal with patients and relatives, consultants and surgeons. They also kept a good eye on the efficient running of their hospital and looked out for waste. Why did they go? Whose idea was it that they should go? To a great extent, the lack of that kind of efficiency has affected our view of our hospitals and resulted in the changes that we have been forced to make.
I served on the Committee that considered the role of the health ombudsman and I was amazed at the cases that were brought before us. Often, there had been a complete breakdown in communications between doctors and patients. There was also the jargon which was used. On one occasion, we were told that the default lay with the "line manager". I made the point to the witness whom we were interviewing that there might well be line managers at Ford of Dagenham but I saw no place for them in our hospitals. That impersonal way of discussing things relates very much to the way in which people deal with each other, the kind of leadership shown in hospitals and the way in which they were organised.
In education, standards have fallen greatly in recent years. During that time, what have our inspectors, who are charged with the task of keeping up standards in schools, been doing? What have local authorities being doing all that time? Have they been doing the job that they are paid to do? I suspect not. So, because the education system is not what we want it to be, this House decides—or rather the Government decide—that drastic measures are needed to restore standards. But if the people originally charged

with the responsibility for keeping up standards had done their job, perhaps the subsequent changes would not have been necessary, and many children would have had a better education.
The relationship between central and local government is extremely complicated. In the old days, it was sensible and happy; central Government decided how much local government should spend and, by and large, local government was happy to accept that money and to spend it sensibly. There was a reasonable relationship between the House and local government. Then, a few years ago, Liverpool and the Greater London Council started to behave in what the Conservative party thought was an unreasonable way. We had to take steps to change the rules and the framework, because the people who had taken control of some authorities had to be restrained.
What have we achieved so far with these changes in local government? We changed from the rates to the community charge and then from the community charge to the council tax. We are already discussing another reorganisation of the structure of local government. The basic problem remains, however. It concerns the relationship between the House and local authorities: how we trust them, how they trust us and how we work together. Unless that relationship is healthy and happy and restored to a sensible basis, no amount of changes to structure or system will bring about the sort of relationship that we want.
How much is wrong with British Rail? Is the problem its structure, or its management? I use British Rail regularly, and I think that the management of the system is what is wrong, not the system itself. How many organisations or businesses of any other kind would think of changing the structure of their organisation before being sure that the fault did not lie with the management? Now we are looking into how to make British Rail more efficient; but I strongly believe that if we change the company's structure dramatically without first having ascertained that the present one will not work much better under a different managerial system, we will do the country a great disservice. I suggest that we go slowly in this direction.
Tonight, the privatisation of Whitehall has been mentioned. It may well be a good idea. I have always thought that we have one of the best civil services in the world—it is widely respected. Perhaps it is not the most efficient of organisations, but we cannot have everything. Perhaps it is a good idea to privatise Whitehall, but for heaven's sake let us look first at ways of making our civil service much more efficient in its present form before we reach too readily for the privatisation lever.
What is the role of the Minister in all this? What is the role of our Secretaries of State in running their Departments? They have a duty to look inwards at the Departments to find out whether they can improve their running. That is part of their responsibilities.
The Inland Revenue is a good example of a body that has to be handled extremely carefully because of the confidentiality of many of its activities. It is also a good example, therefore, of why we should first try to do everything possible to make it more efficient in its present form before trying to change it radically.
The Government, they say, want to reduce legislation. They are introducing 28 Bills in this Session of Parliament —a fair amount of legislation, resulting in a lot of disruption. If changes are to be made, there will obviously


be disruption; but unless something really needs changing, an unwarranted amount of disruption may be entailed. Sometimes that disruption lasts so long that one wonders whether it has all been worth it.
Although it may sound as though I am criticising the public services, I am not. We should appreciate the job that public servants do. If they are well led and rewarded, their job can be rewarding for them and they can provide an excellent service for us all.
I am conscious that I have posed more questions than I have answered. I have already said that I think that the citizens charter is excellent in principle. I do not suggest for a moment that privatisation is wrong; it is usually right. Nor do I suggest that structures must never be changed, but I do say that before any structure is changed, its leadership and management should be examined so as to ensure that it is the structure, not the management, that is at fault. Sometimes a fresh appraisal, a new management and a new approach are needed within existing frameworks. The quality of service to the public is often more likely to be improved by sound, firm government every day than by a never-ending flood of legislation.

Mr. Matthew Taylor: This is the second time in the opening months of this Parliament that I have dealt with what has been termed a flagship of Government policy. The previous occasion was the debate on the poll tax legislation; now we have the citizens charter. It may be instructive to examine the reactions to those two measures to get some idea of the reaction to the Government.
The previous Prime Minister, at the end of her time in power, had a peculiar knack of splitting her party and uniting the country against her; certainly, that is what the poll tax legislation did. This Prime Minister seems to have more of a knack of making everything grey, torpid and languid—at least until recent weeks.
In debating the flagship of the Prime Minister's Administration we have a virtually empty Chamber. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster may have been hoping for some support from Back Benchers, but not many of them have shown up to offer it, and the one speech so far by a Conservative has shown at best half-hearted support. That is because the charter has been extraordinarily narrowly focused and unambitious.
The principles behind the Minister's version of the charter are, of course, shared by all in the House. He makes a great deal of welcoming support from both sides of the House, but that support is hardly surprising. Of course public services should be responsive to consumer preferences and should meet the public's need for high-quality services—no one can doubt statements put in those terms. The issues that need to be debated concern how such a charter should be shaped, how its provisions should be delivered and guaranteed and how much real change it should bring about. Unfortunately, Ministers seem content to ignore all alternative views on those matters.
The Conservative charter has been shaped too much by Ministers and by a Government who are unprepared to fund public services properly or to back the charter with full access to information. The Government's limited agenda was epitomised in the Minister's speech tonight.
Contrary to the Government's view, most of the public take a more pragmatic view: they think that management can be improved, savings made and alternative avenues explored, but they also take the view that they need to know more than the Government allow them to know. They cannot trust Ministers to run every local service centrally. Above all, they take the view that many services will be improved only by greater investment in them. Why else did 78 per cent. of people polled during the general election campaign say that they were prepared to pay an extra penny in the pound on income tax to fund improvements in education?
In the House yesterday, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster spoke of the transformation of public services brought about by the citizens charter. In the past few days, I have had letters from constituents concerned about bed closures and the introduction of car park charges at my local trust hospital. I have heard from a friend stuck in the underground waiting without explanation while a tube simply did not move, and from others who daily have to stand on packed trains on their way to work.
A constituent, trying to collect his daughter from a railway station late at night, was unable to discover why the train was delayed. He telephoned Paddington but received no answer; he contacted the station but it was no longer staffed; and he telephoned the information bureau at Truro, but that was no longer staffed either. Eventually, his daughter arrived some two hours or more late.
I received a letter today from an elderly person who had received a warning of an overdue bill from what was formerly a public service, desperately upset by the tone of the letter. Many people have contacted me during recent weeks and months after experiencing problems with the disability living allowance unit and getting not so much as an answer to a telephone call or even a letter of explanation.
Those people will not recognise that there has been a transformation in public services; nor will the majority of people who regularly use public services, as opposed to Ministers who do not. The charter is weak on real commitment and vague about compensation schemes, because the funding is not there.
Having set the targets, what are the mechanisms for delivering them and making progress? When targets are not met, who will knock heads together or put in extra funding, and who will take decisions on what is needed? Where services prove that they cannot meet the standards set by the charter, will their funding be reconsidered? Shall we have a report in the Budget or autumn statement process telling us how the charter failures match up to the Government's investment proposals?
Some charter proposals are not funded at all—for example, the citizens charter set the response time for an ambulance to arrive at an emergency in rural areas at 19 minutes. In Cornwall, the health authority is dependent on the air ambulance even to come close to that target. Cornwall has many remote areas and, especially in the summer when the roads are choked with caravans, it would be ludicrous to expect land ambulances to reach people in 19 minutes. Everyone in the county knows that the air ambulance is vital, yet despite the fact that the Government say in the citizens charter that people can expect such a service, they will not fund it. It relies entirely on coffee mornings, fetes and other fund-raising events supported by the generosity of the people of Cornwall.
It is hypocritical of the Government to claim credit for the citizens charter when it is the charitable donations of a low-wage area such as Cornwall that delivers their pledges, not Government investment in order to bring services up to scratch.
Another example of how the Government's supposed transformation of a public service, its management and the delivery of the service does not come up to scratch was the recent decision, approved by Offer, the Office of Electricity Regulation—the body which is supposed to protect the ordinary public—to increase electricity prices in the far south-west by 5 per cent. and to cut electricity prices for those nearer to power stations. Businesses therefore face a 10 per cent. price differential in areas where the costs of running those businesses are already higher than in most parts of the country.
Not only are people suffering from that increase, but when I raised the matter with a Minister at the Department of Trade and Industry, he was not even aware of it. When Conservative Members of Parliament from the south-west told the Prime Minister that their seats were at risk to the Liberal Democrats because of that decision, he did not know what was happening.
The transformation in public services is not an improvement. All that has changed is that things get worse and Ministers and Prime Ministers no longer know what is going on in the basic services on which people rely in their homes and businesses.
The basic elements of a good service may be obvious, but to what extent did Ministers consult to discover which aspects of services people felt were most in need of improvement? Too much of the early round of the citizens charter consisted of asking Ministers and civil servants what targets they should be setting, not asking the people on the receiving end what they needed, be they suffering from a disability, in education or the consumers of a service.
Have the Government insisted, Department by Department, on proper, early and responsive consultation with the users of public services in future before setting the charters and updating them? Too often Ministers have answered the questions themselves, guided by their own ideological assumptions about what people ought to want and ought to know, not what they want and what they want to know.
An example of that is the school league tables. Did Ministers ask parents' representatives what kind of information would be useful to them in choosing a school for their children? I do not mean at a meeting of the Conservative supper club or at a Conservative fete or raffle. Did they comprehensively and rigorously consult to discover what people wanted?
Parents point out that exam results are not the be-all and end-all. They are concerned about the atmosphere in a school, the quality of the facilities and class sizes. Above all, they recognise that the social background of pupils will have an impact on examination results, making comparisons of raw results difficult or even meaningless.
Information is a good thing, but it must be adequately provided in the form which people want and in which they can use it. The Audit Commission has shown that value-added league tables can work, but the Government have still made no pledge to publish such information in a form which will be readily usable. They tell us that parents will be able to obtain the information from the tables. The Government could not even get the data in the tables right,

so how do they expect parents to extract that information'? The Government design systems too much to suit their own political priorities and not enough to suit those of the consumer.
That brings me to an essential point in the process. Ministers like to stress the importance of information, but they must be prepared to accept the pressing need for a freedom of information Act. Citizens are free only if they have rights of access to information at their determination, at their choice, not merely to information that Ministers choose to deliver to them.
As I said yesterday, in the documents that we now have, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster is reported to have pressed his colleagues, Alan Clark and the noble Lord Trefgarne, to make available to the public information on the reinterpretation of the guidelines governing Iraqi arms sales, but that advice was not followed. The Minister lost his argument.
Now that he is in a stronger position, he should be pressing the Government for a freedom of information Act. Such legislation would have made it unnecessary for us to rely on him in his losing battle or on the chance decision of a judge in court to make the information available. Above all, individuals would have been able to rely on the legislation in order not to be sent to prison when not only were they not breaking the rules but they were being encouraged by Ministers to act as they did.
For a Government to hail the citizens charter as a flagship policy yet to refuse to give the public the basic entitlement to information that a freedom of information Act would provide, suggests once more that the citizens charter is shaped more by what Ministers decide that people should know, rather than what the public want and need to know.
The Government are repeatedly criticised for their changes to legal aid and for tackling the problem of lengthy cases and the costs to which they give rise not by reforming the system, to make it easier to obtain access to justice, but by cutting back finance to limit the numbers who can hope to have any chance of enjoying justice in the first place. The question is not whether a public or private service, or public individuals or private individuals, are involved. Everyone should be able to seek redress through the courts without being financially blocked. We hear no complaints about that from Ministers with responsibility for the citizens charter.
I do not deny the need for an efficient and value-for-money civil service; nor do I deny that there can be real value in market testing, but it must be used with discretion—on that, the Minister is woolly and unclear. Neither he nor anyone else has expressed concern about confidentiality within the Inland Revenue, yet everyone accepts its importance because there can scarcely be an area of government where confidence in the security of information can be more important to the ordinary person.
Only today, we saw how unreliable confidentiality can be in the public sector. I was appalled when I saw the front page of The Sun this morning, but not because of the Chancellor of the Exchequer's actions. I overheard one hon. Member—his identity and party do not matter—say,"Mind you, it looks like his account is in pretty much the same state as mine." I suspect that is the general reaction—but most members of the public would not


expect to see such details about themselves on the front page of The Sun and repeated on the front page of the Evening Standard tonight.
I do not suggest that any privatisation will necessarily undermine the charter's confidentiality clause, but confidentiality is crucial in the case of the Inland Revenue—and, as there is no problem with that Department, if it is not broken, why try to mend it?
There is a silly continuing debate about who first thought of the citizens charter. My right hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr. Ashdown) published his book, "Citizen's Britain", and then Labour and the Government published their charters. They are merely different interpretations of party interests in serving the system better. My right hon. Friend's book came first, but we should not make anything of that.
Different views are expressed in the House about what should be done. The Government are market-orientated and tend to assume that if something is market-tested or privatised, it is likely to become better—unless someone can prove otherwise. Probably, the proof of that pudding will only be in the eating.
Members of Labour's Front Bench—perhaps because civil service trade unions are a little too influential—tend to protect the status quo and the public sector. Inevitably perhaps, my party tends to call for more root-and-branch reform of the way that our democracy works. It is not just a question of localising and decentralising, in which I support Ministers. It is a question of giving ordinary individuals real political control, of decentralising political control as well as management, in both central and local government, as Tower Hamlets has done with its neighbourhood councils; of giving the public more control—not of privatising services but of democratising them; and of not having schools opting out of local democracy but giving them even more of it and of maintaining local democratic control over those schools.
It is a question, too, of a far-reaching root-and-branch reform with a Bill of Rights, so that the public can have real access to justice and freedom of information. That is the kind of citizens charter that we need and the kind of citizen's Britain that we need—but it is the kind of agenda that the Government signally fail to address.

Mr. Gyles Brandreth: The hon. Member for Truro (Mr. Taylor) referred to the number of right hon. and hon. Members present in the Chamber, but omitted to touch on the quality. Were the Liberal Democrat Benches stuffed to overflowing, they would not present quite as much intellectual firepower as my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for the Civil Service, seated alone on the Government Front Bench. Throw in the Whip, my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Patnick), and add my right hon. Friend the Chancellor for the Duchy of Lancaster and one is talking about a veritable All Souls on wheels.
I would not throw myself into that intellectual cocktail, but it is worth recording that the last occasion on which I spoke in the presence of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy and my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State was a quarter of a century ago,

when sitting at our feet admiring us was the President-elect of the United States. He went west, and it worked out slightly differently for him.
The civilised nature of this debate might suggest that there is no real division between the two sides of the House, but I suspect that there is—despite the courtesies that pass to and fro. Opposition Members give the impression that they are determined to see the worst in everything, whereas my right hon. and hon. Friends and I are determined to bring out the best, particularly in our public services.
Since the arrival of the citizens charter, Opposition Members have been cynical at worst, sneering at best, and grudging with their praise. Perhaps they are irritated because, having thought of it first, they were not quick enough off the mark in making the public realise that, or perhaps because we thought of it first. That is a foolish game to play.
More seriously, perhaps Opposition Members are irritated that ordinary people believe that the charter stands for something important. The Opposition's patronising attitude towards the charter annoys those who use it not simply to obtain a better level of service for themselves but to deliver better services to others.
The charter and the new office that it creates will, for the first time, offer accessibility, courtesy, punctuality, and openness—all central to the agenda of public service. Opposition Members dismiss the charter as gloss, public relations, and hype—not realising that those who use our public services are crying out for higher standards, and that the providers of our public services want to do a better job. Many of them welcome the challenge that the charter presents, and are proud of the charter mark.
I have long wondered why there is only one Monopolies Commission, so I warmly welcome the fact that public bodies having that monopolistic status—such as the Benefits Agency and the courts—are to be confronted by a series of ever more stringent standards, designed to deliver the best service and value for money. Being treated courteously and quickly by a named official is not trivial but a fundamental change of approach. Standards are important, but so are incentives, and for half a million civil servants now to receive performance-related pay is as it should be.
The good news is, all that is begining to work. After yesterday's statement by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy, I mentioned that I happened to be the grateful recipient of a refund from British Rail after travelling on a severely delayed train. Of course we would all prefer our trains not to be late; but the refund not only compensated me completely for the money that I had spent and lost, but will help, cumulatively, to concentrate the mind of British Rail.
At this point, the Opposition will no doubt cry—certainly they should cry—that the answer lies in further investment. So it does, but it does not inevitably and solely lies in further cash investment. Investment is also possible in terms of better management, better practice and better service.
The British Rail passengers charter, published in March —happily, on my birthday; I see the whole thing in personal terms, and the joy of the citizens charter is the way in which it relates to the citizen as an individual—is just one part of a package of measures designed to make life easier for the rail traveller. The targets have been set;


performance is being monitored, and the results are being published; fares are being adjusted to take account of different standards of service on different routes.
Previously, such disciplines have been conspicuous by their absence. It is no use Opposition Members saying that everything is all right as it is. Without the charter, the standard to which I have referred would not have been introduced. Under the charter, British Rail has introduced the standards of reliability and punctuality that passengers should be able to expect. Every four weeks, as part of its "track record" initiative, British Rail is publishing up-to-date performance figures. The results show that, while many routes are meeting their targets, some are still failing to do so. On routes where British Rail continues to under-perform, season ticket rebates of up to 10 per cent. may be triggered by the charter.
The principles of the passengers charter are to be extended in the future: British Rail has now committed itself to publishing conditions of carriage that are fairer, simpler and easier to understand, and the 1993 reliability and punctuality standards for Inter-City, regional railways and Network SouthEast will be published this month.
I should like the passengers charter to be extended to cover the quality of railway stations, as well as services on trains. The conditions in ticket offices, waiting rooms and public lavatories are often an absolute disgrace; perhaps, in the fulness of time, the charter will get to grips with that. Incredibly, the ticket office at Chester station—where I shall be in a matter of hours—is currently located in a Portakabin. That is not a temporary measure; it is to remain there for a couple of years. Would hon. Members fly on an airline that made them buy their tickets from a nissan hut? No: they would feel a certain lack of confidence about the validity of their tickets.
The city of Chester is historic; it is the jewel in the crown of the north. [Interruption.] Forgive me; it is the jewel in the crown of the country. We may have to wait for the privatisation of British Rail for a solution to the problem—although I prefer to think of it as private investment in the railways. No railway station that had benefited from private investment, and from the attitudes that are prevalent in, say, the British tourist industry—attitudes that should be prevalent throughout public services—would allow the lavatories and ticket office at Chester station to remain in their present condition.
The parents charter is another of the successes of the citizens charter movement. In England and Wales, school examination results are now published, and comparative tables showing examination results in local secondary schools are now being made available to the parents of children who are about to transfer to such schools. From autumn next year, national curriculum results, truancy rates and the routes taken by pupils when they reach school-leaving age will also be published. Already, parents are receiving written reports on their children at least once a year; they are also reminded of their right to appeal if they are not successful in their choice of school. School prospectuses and governors' reports must now include examination results and truancy rates.
I am delighted at the breadth of the welcome for the publication of the tables. Noting the approval of The Guardian and that of the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton), we begin to wonder whether the Government are on the right track; but, given that all the parents to whom I have spoken also approve, I realise that the Government certainly are. I was also delighted to read

in today's press that the Opposition are apparently now back-tracking in their objection to the league tables. At least they are consistent in their back-tracking: I commend them for that.
The Opposition's earlier attitude was extraordinarily patronising to parents, who understand full well that, although examination results constitute a fundamental test of a school's performance, they are not the only test: a range of other performance indicators contribute to the overall picture. I hope that, as the parents charter progresses, those other indicators can be developed more fully. Inevitably, the cultural and the sporting life of a school will be involved. Let me declare an interest as chairman of the National Playing Fields Association. Such aspects as the number of well-used school playing fields are elements of the equation that adds up to a successful school. I hope that we shall also be able to develop performance indicators in relation to a school's commitment to the community, careers advice and further education advice, and that parents will gain easy access to those indicators.
I know full well that parents in my constituency will not only look at the league tables, but visit the school to which they intend to send their children and look at it in the round. Let me cite two schools in particular. Blacon high school has made a substantial contribution to technical education; it also has a wonderful team of handbell ringers. Currently that is not to feature in the league tables, but in time, if we can develop the right kind of indicators, we shall be able to incorporate it. Similarly, Bishops high school, in my constituency, has a marvellous community library. Its role as a community school is very important to it: the school library is shared with the community at large.
The White Paper that was published yesterday contains much encouraging material. It is, moreover, a stylish publication, featuring good English and clarity of presentation, which is important. It seems that putting over information in an accessible, clear way is now dismissed as gloss and hype, which is a pity. So much of t he paper is good that it is difficult to know what to highlight. Personally, some people might wish to highlight the various commitments in relation to the Inland Revenue—which, I must confess, wants to take more from me than I earn, and is writing to me from a variety of addresses with a series of different but equally indecipherable signatures.
I share the concern that was expressed earlier about confidentiality. If we cannot trust our bank, it is a little depressing. I have read the scurrilous stories about my right hon. Friend and flexible Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I must say that I do not believe them for a moment—but, if they were true, how marvellously courageous my right hon. Friend was last night in voting with Conservative Members who decided to support the pay freeze. A man in those personal circumstances has a chance to offload his own problems with a single vote—and what does he do? He thinks of others first.
Although I speak in a slightly jesting manner, there is a serious undertone to this, because some 90 Opposition Members voted for a wage increase at a time when wage restraint is being urged on those in the public sector and forced on those in the private sector by the recession. It is a serious issue, particularly in the light of this afternoon's statement on the standard spending assessment.

Mr. Davidson: How many other sources of income does the hon. Gentleman have, and how much do they amount to?

Mr. Brandreth: They are negligible. Since becoming the Member of Parliament for City of Chester, I have devoted myself completely to my role as a Member of Parliament. If the hon. Member were here as often as I am, he would know that I have no time to be anywhere else but here or in my constituency, where I am committed to being a full-time Member of Parliament—fortunately, with experience from elsewhere, which I hope helps to inform my judgment.
As a constituency Member, my greatest concern is about the Benefits Agency. I am pleased that it published its customers charter at the beginning of the year. It sets out minimum national targets, including, for example, the fact that income support claims should be cleared in four days, which is down from a target of five days for the year 1991–92; that 65 per cent. of child benefit claims should be cleared in 10 days; and that 60 per cent. of family credit claims should be cleared within 13 days.
By the end of 1992, each of the Benefits Agency's 159 districts will display local targets, standards and information on performance achieved against them. Its annual report will be available at every local office. I shall study that with interest and concern, because although those standards are commendable they still are not good enough by any manner of means. I hope that it is an on-going programme, because we need to jack up standards each year.
The Benefits Agency charter commits the agency to telling customers about their appeal rights each time a decision is made about a benefit, explaining that customers who have a complaint about the service they receive can contact the customer service manager, who will respond within seven days. It has set a target that at least 85 per cent. of customers should say that they found the service satisfactory or better. I do not think that 85 per cent. of customers in my constituency are yet finding the service satisfactory or better, but I am glad that the standard has been set and I hope that we can achieve it, sustain it and then improve on it.
The major development outlined in the Secretary of State's statement yesterday and amplified today is the extension of market testing. This obviously must make sense. We want the highest standards and best value in all our public services, and all that market testing means is to test a particular service in the market to see whether it can be done better. I did not understand the semantic by-play that was going on earlier, because the issue seems quite simple: if an agency or department is delivering the goods, it has nothing to fear. If it is not, let us find something that can.
The list of Government Departments where market testing will take place, which was published yesterday, is very impressive: the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Customs and Excise—I was delighted to see that —the Ministry of Defence—I was delighted to see that; we have plenty of opportunities for it in Chester—and the Department of National Heritage, where several items caught my eye, such as the national lottery. The lottery will obviously be handled most effectively by an independent agency with the right guidelines. There will be forms, a contract will be agreed and the standards will be

established. All we are attempting to do is test it against the market to see who can deliver the goods most satisfactorily in terms of quality and price.
I was pleased to see the royal parks and historic royal palaces mentioned in the list. The monarchy was not listed, although it has little to fear, as I doubt that another team could do the job more effectively or could provide better value for money.
The Labour party has an enviable record for changing its mind on almost every public service reform introduced by the Government. I think I am right in saying that it opposed the next steps agencies, yet now its leader supports them, although I was a little confused by what the hon. Member for Redcar (Ms. Mowlam) said this afternoon. It used to oppose parental choice, but now it claims to back it. Last week, it opposed the publication of examination results, but this week—at least according to the news report that I read this morning—it now supports them.
I wonder how long it will be before Opposition Members drop their objections to market testing. There was a little semantic by-play this afternoon, leaving the options open, but perhaps the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Ms. Hoey) will clarify that. It would be wonderful to have a simple yes or no on whether Labour agrees with market testing.
It is understandable that some people are frightened of market testing. People are often frightened of the real world. I understand that and sympathise because I come from a family of good public servants. My mother is a teacher. I have a sister who is a teacher, another sister who is a nurse and a third sister who is a social worker. I have a sister-in-law who is a teacher and a brother-in-law who is a civil servant.

Mr. Waldegrave: Not more!

Mr. Brandreth: This is beginning to worry my right hon. Friend. Half a dozen members of my family are on the public payroll—and now me, too. A -magnificent seven" of us are living off the state. For us, the funds continue to flow in. and with any change we feel threatened.
I mentioned the threat that was clearly felt by the 90 Members who decided last night to vote against a pay freeze, despite what people are feeling all over the country and the effect that it might have if the example were followed in local authorities, which have been given a 3·7 per cent. increase. Seven tenths of local government expenditure goes on salaries, but if authorities keep to the guideline of up to 1·5 per cent. that will not force cuts on anybody. But cuts will be forced if people follow the example given by Opposition Members, including, I believe—I am ready to be corrected—Opposition Front-Bench spokesmen, who voted to put their own snouts in the gravy at a time when restraint is called for.
A survey of Members conducted at the last general election showed that 79 per cent. of the new intake had no experience of business or manufacturing. They were teachers, social workers, lawyers—dirty work I know, but somebody has got to do it—journalists, trade union officials and political researchers. It is a pretty depressing litany and we have to break the mould. We must confront the real world, which is what market testing is all about.
We must break the mould and cope with change, because without it and without being ready to confront change, we shall not achieve any improvement.
I have a distinguished—I use the word nicely—forebear by the name of Jeremiah Brandreth, who was the last person to be beheaded in this country for treason. He was executed at Derby on 7 November 1817. I do not believe that my ancestor was guilty of the sedition with which he was charged, but I must share with the House the family secret that he was a Luddite. He was known as the hopeless radical; it is a funny feeling knowing that his soul descendants are on the Opposition Benches—the other side. That is why I have that nice familial feeling tonight.
My ancestor was a Luddite; he could not cope with change. There are people—sadly, they include Labour Members—who believe that we should go on doing things exactly as we have always done them, simply because they have always been done that way. Unlike Jeremiah Brandreth, I believe in change. In Lord Liverpool's day, those who were locked in the past may have been executed; happily, today we have a much more civilised approach. We call it the citizens charter.

8 pm

Mr. Hugh Bayley: We were promised quality rather than quantity from the Conservative side tonight, but we seem to have had a fair amount of quantity from the hon. Member for City of Chester (Mr. Brandreth).
I was glad to see "The Citizen's Charter—First report: 1992" yesterday. One of my first contributions in the House after being elected in April was a call for the Government to follow York city council's example in being the first public authority not only to produce a citizens charter but to publish an annual report on its successes and failures in implementing its charter standards. At that stage I was not given a firm assurance that that would be mirrored by the national charter, so I am delighted that only six months later the report has appeared. I wish that all Cabinet Ministers would listen as readily to my suggestions, and I congratulate the Ministers concerned on producing such an important part of the citizens charter initiative.
I was interested in one comment made by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster when he introduced the White Paper yesterday. He said:
more than 90 per cent. of the 150 or so initial commitments"—
I find it slightly odd that he should talk about "150 or so" commitments rather than a precise number. The right hon. Gentleman said:
more than 90 per cent. of the 150 or so initial commitments in the citizens charter White Paper have been met or are in hand".—[Official Report, 25 November 1992; Vol. 214, c. 869.]
I ask the right hon. Gentleman how many commitments have been met and how many are in hand. I would gladly give way now if he wished to give me the information—or perhaps the question will be answered by the Minister who sums up.
I ask that question because I carried out my own survey, if that is how it should be described, by asking parliamentary questions in the summer, on the first anniversary of the publication of the citizens charter. I wanted to find out how many of the 10 key promises which the Prime Minister made in introducing the charter to Paliament on 22 July 1991 had been fulfilled. I found that only one had clearly been achieved one year after the

charter was published. That achievement, which has already been mentioned, was to reduce the waiting time for driving tests to a little more than five weeks. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster said earlier that in 1988 the waiting time was 13 weeks, but that by the time the charter was published it had fallen to seven weeks. Since publication, the time has been driven down by a further two weeks.
I do not belittle that achievement, but I wish that such demonstrable benefits could be shown in more of the areas in which the charter made promises. To say that a matter is in hand is not the same as to say that what has been promised has been done. It is a little like saying, "My cheque is in the post." It is promise rather than fulfilment.
Shortage of time prevents me from commenting on all the areas covered by the charter, but I have picked out one—the health service and the patients charter—partly because I am familar with the subject and partly because the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster was Secretary of State for Health when the charter was published.
"The Citizen's Charter—First report: 1992", which was published yesterday, lists 10 key rights and entitlements under the heading of patients and the patients charter. I refer back to the document published a year ago, the patients charter, which listed 19 key rights and entitlements. What has happened to the other nine?
Among the missing rights is the patient's right to be referred to a consultant acceptable to him or her. We know that the internal market now means that patients can go only where the contract is placed. A second missing right is the right to a second medical opinion. A third is the right to ensure that everyone, including people with special needs, can use services. A fourth missing right is patients' right to have their community care needs settled before being discharged from hospital. A fifth is the right to have one's complaint, if one has cause for complaint, dealt with promptly. That was one of the three key new rights introduced in the patients charter—but it does not appear in the one-year report.
Other rights which appeared in the patients charter have now been subtly and quietly watered down. The patients charter said that patients should be guaranteed admission for treatment by a specific date. The new document says that the patient should
be guaranteed admission to hospital for virtually all treatments by a specific date".
That is a subtle introduction of new words which allow some treatments and conditions to be exempted. Why has the commitment been watered down, and why are the reasons for watering it down not spelled out? Why is the public sector's performance against the standards set in the "150 or so" commitments not spelled out? It is spelled out for some but for many it is not.
For instance, the patients charter promised that out-patients would be given a specific appointment time and be seen within 30 minutes of that time. In the summer I asked the Secretary of State for Health to find out in how many cases that promise was being met. The answer which I received was:
This information is not collected centrally.
Another patients charter promise was that patients would be seen immediately for an initial assessment on arrival at an accident and emergency department. I asked the Secretary of State for Health what proportion of patients were seen when they arrived at an accident and


emergency department within five minutes, within 15 minutes and within 30 minutes. The answer which I received was:
This information is not collected centrally.
I asked about the commitment in the patients charter to the effect that
your operation should not be cancelled on the day you are due to arrive at hospital." [Official Report; 13 July 1992; Vol. 211, c. 516 and 514.]
I asked the Secretary of State what proportion of patients had their operations cancelled on the day that they were due to arrive in hospital. I received the same answer—the information was not collected centrally.
The patients charter says that the patient has a right to have his complaint dealt with promptly, so I asked what proportion of complaints from patients were dealt with within one week, within one month, within three months or within a longer period. Again, the answer was that the information was not collected.
The patients charter says that health authorities should ensure that services can be used by everyone, including people with physical disabilities, by ensuring that buildings can be used by people in wheelchairs. That is a laudable aim—so I asked the Secretary of State what proportion of NHS buildings were accessible to people in wheelchairs. I was told that the information was not held centrally.
I could cite many more examples in which the answer to such questions is, "Dunno, mate." I ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster how he could be so sure when he told the House yesterday that 90 per cent. of the promises in the citizens charter were being met, when information on so many of them is not collected by the Government. How does he know?
I do not want to be uncharitable, so I point out that some of the standards are being met. The driving test standard has been met. The redundant workers charter promises that 80 per cent. of claims for redundancy payments will be paid within 14 weeks. I checked and found that the figure was 84 per cent. The charter standard has been out-performed. Some standards have been massively out-performed. Ninety per cent. of work permit applications were processed within eight weeks, against the charter standard of 75 per cent. In this area, it seems that the Government are taking a leaf out of Joseph Stalin's book. He managed dramatically to out-perform all his five-year plans by setting standards that were easy to achieve.
All the evidence tells us that if, as in the case of the work permit office, the Government set the standards low, it pays to set standards low. If, perhaps under pressure from a Minister, a civil servant is tempted to aim high, he can always get off the hook. Either the data are not collected so that no one can measure success or failure against published standards or, if the data are collected, the findings are not published in the annual report on the citizens charter. If the Government are really on the hook, the wording of a promise can be changed. The promise, for example, that patients will be treated within a certain time becomes a promise that patients will receive surgery within a certain time in almost all cases.
The golden rule seems to be that people can do what they like as long as they do not let on. If they do not let on, nobody will ever notice, they hope. As Members of Parliament, it is our job to notice and to hold the

Government to account, as we are doing tonight. It is noticeable that there is no Select Committee that deals with citizen charter issues. The separate departmental Select Committees can examine the promises and the performance of individual departments, such as the Department of Health and the Department of the Environment, but there is no point at which the strategy of the citizens charter is open to scrutiny in the way that the work of individual Departments is. Why are the Government so shy? What have they to hide?

Mr. Edward Garnier: You may remember, Mr. Deputy Speaker, from your days at school that there was an English king of whom it was said:
Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York.
To a certain extent, it is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for York (Mr. Bayley). I prefer to say that the sun has come from Chester this evening. The speech by my hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester (Mr. Brandreth) surpasses many this Session. I have a secret to impart to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, in addition to those already revealed by my hon. Friend. We agreed to swap speeches before my hon. Friend delivered his speech. His speech was a tour de force and I congratulate him.
There are four limbs to the citizens charter programme: privatisation, where it is appropriate; competition, where it is possible; the devolution of decision-making; and the application of charter principles, about which my hon. Friend the Member for Chester spoke so eloquently.
There has been a good deal of progress in privatisation since 1979. Some 46 major activities and many smaller ones have been privatised, to the benefit of the British public. That scheme of things has caused annoyance, dismay and alarm on Opposition Benches. There is alarm and dismay because, as the programme unfolds year by year, Opposition Members see the good sense of it and they see the poverty of their own arguments levelled against them. Why should the British public be imprisoned by monolithic, state-run organisations? The Government —the state—had no business being involved in so many of the activities that have now been privatised. I am sure that many of my constituents welcomed the privatisations of the past few years.
We know that there are to be further privatisations, and we welcome that in matters in which the Government have no proper role and in which there is no constitutional need for them to be involved. Why on earth should the Government—the state—be involved in the running and day-to-day management of an agency such as Companies House? It is ludicrous and unnecessary for the Government to be involved in such detailed work. The work could clearly be covered by an agency and I trust that it will be before long. Other examples are the docklands light railway, the drivers and vehicle operators information technology department, the National Engineering Laboratory, Parcel Force and the vehicle inspectorate. They are all areas of national life that are capable of being dealt with by non-governmental agencies. The sooner they are, the better they will be.
My hon. Friend the Member for Chester has dealt eloquently with the concept of market testing and I do not propose to add to what he said on competition. The third area is the devolution of decision-making, which, in essence, means taking decisions closer to the customer. As


my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster said, in instances where, for whatever reason, there is no choice but public ownership and no chance of competition being applied, the third of the four elements must come into play.
Our role must be to devise and apply disciplines that, in their own way, are no less demanding than open decisions. Why should we not bring to the public sector the disciplines of the private sector? As my right hon. Friend said, the system that we have used has been the creation of next steps executive agencies at arm's length from Whitehall. I understand that such agencies are increasingly, although grudgingly, being accepted as the proper way forward by Opposition Members.
The next steps programme, which was initially opposed by the Labour party, has revolutionised the organisation and management of the civil service. Some 76 agencies have been established and a further 27 candidates have been announced. Half the civil service is already working along next steps lines. I very much look forward to the day when the other half does the same.
The fourth element of the proposals is the citizens charter. The charter brings to bear on the public services a range of additional disciplines including the monitoring of performance and the publication of results, and consultation with service users to ensure that services are geared not to the convenience of the providers, but to the needs of the public. Why should Opposition Members fear that? Surely we are here to provide the public with a service and not a straitjacket. The third discipline is the introduction of truly independent inspection procedures so that public services are assessed not only by expert professionals, but by members of the public who use and rely on those services.
An area of the citizens charter of which I have some knowledge from my work as a lawyer is the courts charter and its application to the criminal and civil justice systems. Hon. Members may have had a chance to glance at the first report which deals in some detail with the citizens charter's application to the criminal and civil justice systems. Those of us who work in the justice system well know the frustration of clients, whether plaintiffs or defendants, or members of the police who are helping with prosecutions.
We know well the frustrations felt by jurors who come involuntarily to court to assist in the system of justice and of other lawyers who wish to get before the court when our case has finished. We know the existing deficiencies of the system, which the courts charter seeks to address. It will now be necessary for witnesses to be given more information before they arrive in court, and it will be essential, the charter promises, that they are kept in touch with the progress of their case on the day. That is not unfair; it is entirely reasonable and should be advanced as quickly as possible.
The courts charter also provides that arrangements should be made for vulnerable witnesses, such as elderly people, children and rape victims, to visit courts in advance of the proceedings. Going to court as a witness—be it involuntarily or voluntarily, to assist a friend—or as a party to a civil action, can be one of the most terrifying experiences for a member of the ordinary public. Imagine what it must be like for a person who is wholly unused to the somewhat Dickensian atmosphere of the High Court or a county court in a town or city far away from his or her

own small town or village to have to come to terms with that strange environment and get used to giving evidence high up on a pedestal.
I have only had to give evidence once—at Wandsworth county court—and although by then I had had 10 years' experience at the Bar, I can assure the House that it was much more frightening than appearing before the Judicial Committee of the House of Lords, which I did not so long ago.
The charter also includes national targets for reducing delays in bringing cases to court, which were published last July together with details of performance against those targets. One of the great frustrations that both parties and lawyers face is the problem of listing. Often, a case listed for a particular day cannot be reached because the cases in front of it have been delayed—for good or bad reasons.
I am glad to see that the courts charter deals with that, because it seems to me that a revised and modernised system of listing, which can make use of all the computer technology now available to us, will enhance the role of the listing officer at the county court or the High Court so that we get a proper standard of efficient throughput. I fully accept that there is no justice in rushed justice. If a case requires a week, let it take a week. Equally, though, there is no justice in delayed justice. A man whose case is not reached on the day on which he expects it to be has good reason to be aggrieved and will think the less of our justice system for it. The courts charter will deal with that or do its best to do so.
Some 30 per cent. more cases have been transferred from the High Court to the local county courts, which, by definition, are easier to access for parties and witnesses. I know from my own experience of the High Court here in London that many civil jury cases, particularly those dealing with false imprisonment and malicious prosecution—cases against police forces—are now being referred to county courts in and around London, especially to the Croydon court centre. That has enabled the throughput of cases to be increased greatly over the past two years.
That procedure should be encouraged, and cases that are simple as matters of law and matters of fact—albeit important to those involved in them—should be transferred to a forum as close to the citizen as possible. I applaud the trend to move cases out of the High Court to the county court. I add to that a plea that there should be sufficient judges appointed to meet the new load on the county courts, that sufficient courts should be made available for judges to sit in and that the judges should be adequately remunerated for their work—but that may be a debate for another day.
It is essential that the greatest efficiency is brought to bear on our criminal justice system and our civil justice system. Without it, the system will crumble. Without lit, well-founded feelings of annoyance will exacerbate the frustrations that we all feel when Big Brother lets us down. It is vital that, with the Government's encouragement, we proceed rapidly towards the fullest possible use of the citizens charter throughout the system of government.

Mr. Terry Davis: I agree with the hon. Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) about one thing: I, too, have given evidence in court, arid I agree with him that it is a frightening experience for anyone to be a witness, especially in a Crown court. I have


not had the experience of being dismissed or declared redundant, but I imagine that that, too, is a frightening experience. That is one of the things that the debate should be about, and I shall come back to it later in my speech.
I want to deal first, however, with the speech of the hon. Member for City of Chester (Mr. Brandreth). It is silly for Government supporters such as the hon. Gentleman to pretend that Labour Members are satisfied with the way things are and to claim that we accept low standards of performance from the civil service. The civil servants working in the city of Birmingham would tell him that it is Labour Members who are most demanding, who have the highest expectations and who set the highest standards of performance for civil servants. That is because we believe in the public service. We want a better public service and we are entitled to ask our civil servants to perform to higher standards, just as they are entitled to say to us that, if we want the highest possible standards, we must pay respectable wages in return. That, too, is one of the things that the debate should be about.
The hon. Member for City of Chester was too easily convinced by the targets set by the Benefits Agency. I recently went to the local office of an executive agency in my constituency and discussed with the local manager the performance targets that had been set for that office. Of the nine performance targets, seven showed no improvement this year over last. The other two showed a deterioration. In other words, the target for the current year is worse than the performance last year. When I asked that manager, "How on earth have you got away with this? How have you managed to convince your boss that you should have seven targets that are no better and two that are worse?", he told me, "Mr. Davis, I am better than the national average, so of course my boss lets me slip back a couple of performance indicators." That is how targets are operating locally.
Market testing has nothing to do with trying to get the best out of the civil service or with improvements in its quality. It is not—as the hon. Member for City of Chester said it was—something to do with getting things done in a better way. Market testing has nothing to do with the improvement of service; it has to do with two Government objectives, the first of which is cutting costs—reducing the cost of the civil service. As most of the cost of the civil service goes in civil servants' wages—it is a labour-intensive service—one can only reduce that cost by reducing civil servants' wages. It has nothing to do with measuring the human cost and everything to do with cutting the financial cost. We are talking not about doing things better but about doing them more cheaply.
The second Government objective is to privatise as much as possible. The hon. Member for Harborough was clear about it. He tore away the veil of the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, and I respect his integrity. He is dogmatic, and believes that privatisation is better—that things are done better by private organisations. He does not realise that, as the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster says, some things may be done better in the public sector.
The reason the Government want to privatise the civil service is that they want to create profit opportunities for private firms, both large and small. Those companies care only about making a profit. It follows that, if they are to

do the work more cheaply and make a profit, they must pay lower wages and provide poorer conditions for the people who do the clerical jobs and dirty jobs in the civil service. It is inevitable that the workers will be paid less and enjoy poorer conditions.
The way in which market testing will work is that the Government will market-test a particular activity in the civil service. A contractor will tender at a price which is less than the calculated cost of the civil servants who do the work at present. The contract will be given to the outside contractor, and the people who do the work will have two possibilities.
The first possibility is that they will simply be declared redundant—at the expense of the taxpayer. The second is that they will be taken over, as the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster confidently forecast, by the outside contractor who wins the job. There is no guarantee that the workers will be taken over by the private contractor, or that they will enjoy the same wages, negotiating conditions and terms of employment which were so hard won by the civil service trade unions. The workers will be expected to work on exactly the same basis as so many people in the health service, who are expected to do the work that they did before the service was contracted out.
Many people who do the dirty jobs and domestic jobs in hospitals, and security guards in hospitals, are paid less than they were previously for the same work. I have met unemployed people who say that they used to work at the local hospital. They do not work there any more because the work was contracted out. They were offered a job at a reduced wage by the private contractor who won the bid.
The hon. Member for Truro (Mr. Taylor), who spoke for the Liberal Democrats, said that his party was all about giving people control over their lives. I cannot imagine anything that takes away someone's control over his or her life more than being unemployed. Being unemployed gives people no choice whatever. It is the total destruction of their personal liberty. Their status, income and everything else depend on having a job. Not only their financial resources but their psychological value in society depend on their being employed. Therefore, the Liberal Democrats should recognise that it is nonsense to tell people that the citizens charter and market testing are all about giving people control over their lives.
Some people will become unemployed; other will keep their jobs because the civil service will be forced, in the market-testing procedure, to bid and to put in tenders for work that is already done by the civil service. We have seen the way in which the Government impede that process. The Government may say that they want to see what the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster always calls a level playing field. I remind the House what a level playing field is in practical terms. We have had some experience of it.
Several of my hon. Friends mentioned the Inland Revenue. When the Inland Revenue prepares in-house bids, it is required to include an on-cost to take account of the civil service pension scheme. The on-cost is 13·5 per cent. of the wage bill because the Government have calculated that the value of the pension scheme for civil servants is 13·5 per cent. Of course, the figure takes into account everybody in the civil service—not simply people on the lowest wages who do not have a good pension but those on the highest wages who have good pensions. The process is therefore weighted against the civil servants whose jobs are market-tested.
A group of typists in Bristol who are subject to market testing took the initiative and went to an insurance company for a quotation for their pension scheme. They were told that it would be 6 per cent. of their wages. That figure compares with the 13·5 per cent. that the Government make management include in the bid for the work that those people do at present. If management cannot find other savings of at least 7·5 per cent., workers lose their jobs and become unemployed. That is a scandal. It loads the dice against the people who do the jobs at present.
Another Bill is going through the House at present. The Civil (Management Functions) Bill introduces local pay bargaining and settlements for precisely the same reason as we have discussed tonight. The purpose is not decentralisation, which many of my hon. Friends support. It is to break national pay agreements and have pay agreements negotiated locally. That will enable managers to keep the work by having lower wage rates than they have at present.
Market testing is a one-way street. We never hear about market testing the other way. We never hear about the civil service being given the opportunity to quote for private work. Why should we not have public enterprise? Why should the civil service not be able to do the work it does well? If the Chancellor means what he says, he should accept that there are some things that the civil service does very well. Why should the civil service not quote for work from private companies? Apparently, that idea never crossed the mind of this dogmatic Government.
Market testing is not the only one-way street; there are others. Many of my hon. Friends have mentioned confidentiality. Indeed, some Conservative Members have made the same point. When we read this morning's newspapers, we were horrified to see the breach of confidentiality involving the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I shall not make any jibes about that. It is scandalous that the Chancellor's private affairs should be put on the front page of newspapers. I should condemn that breach of confidentiality whether it involved a Conservative or an Opposition Member. But that is not the point. The point is that there must have been a breach of confidentiality.
The Inland Revenue is not the only organisation with confidential information. The Department of Social Security has a great deal of information about individuals, their families and their relationships. The Employment Service has a similar amount of information about individuals, their families, their relationships and their dependants. All that information is at risk. It would be ridiculous to suggest that there would be leaks from all private firms in the country. We do not have leaks from all banks.
The difference is that, in the case of Access and the National Westminster bank, which owns Access, an individual citizen has a choice. If we believe that there is a risk of breach of confidentiality with regard to our Access or bank account, we can go to another bank. We will not be able to choose another Inland Revenue, regardless of whether its work has been market-tested and contracted out. There will only ever be one Inland Revenue, one Department of Social Security, one Benefits Agency and one Employment Service. Individuals have no choice between private and public or between different private firms. Individuals will go to the Inland Revenue, the social

security office and the local employment office. What is more, they are required to give private personal information to those agencies and departments.
We can choose how much information we give our bank; we have no choice whatever about the information that we give to the Inland Revenue, the Department of Social Security or the Employment Service when benefits are calculated. We are required by law to give that information. All citizens and all hon. Members should he concerned about the clear risk of confidentiality shown by the experience of the Chancellor in his personal affairs.
Not only civil servants but all of us are affected. Civil servants are especially affected because their jobs are at risk. Their jobs will go as a result of market testing. That is why more than 800 typists and secretaries at the Inland Revenue—they are hardly a militant group of trade unionists—came to London today to protest about their work being market-tested and their jobs being put at risk. They are bewildered and angry, and they cannot understand why the Government are doing that to them. They have given years of service to this Government and previous Governments. Many of them have worked in the civil service for 20 or 30 years.
They have experience and proven loyalty over many years; but loyalty is another two-way street. Civil servants cannot understand why the Government are not loyal to them. The Government are prepared to sack them to get the job done more cheaply for lower wages, despite their service in the past. It is not surprising that civil servants feel that the Government have no confidence in them and place little value on their years of service. The time will come in three or four years when those civil servants will have an opportunity to say that they have no confidence in the Government.

Lady Olga Maitland: I listened with great interest to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr. Davis). I find it depressing that he scorned and jeered at the importance of trying to instil value for money and standards in the civil service, when we spend taxpayers' money on running it. I find it rather cheap that he should deliberately go in for scaremongering tactics, suggesting that jobs are at risk because contracts are being put out to the private sector. He suggests that people will automatically be paid less. Jobs put out to the private sector mean more jobs in that sector—it is merely a shift from one to the other.
We must ask ourselves; who is paying for our civil service? Undoubtedly, the answer is the hon. Gentleman, me and the taxpayer. I sometimes find it galling that the Opposition totally fail to connect Government spending with the fact that all that money comes out of every working man and woman's pay packet. Let there be no doubt about the Government's commitment to cutting waste. It is a moral responsibility, and it is admirable that they have got around to it. I welcome their initiatives in that direction.
In these belt-tightening times, it is even more appropriate that we should ensure that our civil service gives value for money, in much the same way that the private sector does. It is salutary that we should have the guts and the courage for close self-analysis.
We are talking about improving public services—improving the way in which they serve their customers and


ensuring that they provide value for money. Contrary to what the hon. Member for Hodge Hill said, market testing is a good way to achieve that. I find it strange that, just for the sake of principle, he is determined to knock it down.
Market testing has been a significant step forward and the Government have been working on it for some time. It is salutary that the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster yesterday announced that £1·5 billion of Whitehall work is to be exposed to competition. The Government have been developing that policy for the past four years and when they began, the amount was only £25 million. We should congratulate the Government on extending that commitment fiftyfold.
It is essential for all competing services to offer better value for money than the civil service. If work can be done cheaper outside, without any loss of quality—we set great store by quality—[Laughter.] It is true. We must use outside contractors if work can be done cheaper, as that is a far better use of taxpayers' money. The service must be exposed to competition. It has never had that pressure in the past, but the taxpayers' money now comes first.
If we consider areas where private sector companies and service users have been put in the same category, we learn a great deal. An article in the Financial Times today mentions value and the fact that tendering is good news for taxpayers, service users and private sector companies alike. It states:
Yesterday's announcement that more than 44,000 jobs in the United Kingdom civil service are to be put out to tender is good news for companies that are well-placed to bid for the contracts…the prospect of almost £1·5 billion of new business in the next 10 months is welcome. But it is also good news for the taxpayer, who can expect significant savings in public expenditure—and better quality services to boot.
Let us examine the services that could be dealt with in that way: financial services, such as basic clerical functions; audit services; payroll duties; keeping the books; and some legal services could be included. Why cannot property and estate management be contracted out? The Department of Health is relocating one of its offices to Leeds. Why not use a private firm to look after the maintenance, cleaning, heating and lighting of the property, instead of recruiting the civil service? It would be far better if the task where leased out. The Government will maintain control of what I call the hands-on function, but it will be privately managed. In that way, one can get the best of all worlds.
What about information technology? Should not the maintenance of computer hardware and programming be put out to private contractors? What about financial legal services, such as conveyancing of Government property—for example, when the Department of the Environment buys land for roads and other projects? Many companies could compete and, with the peaks and troughs in the market, the advantage for the Government is in not having to keep on full-time staff unnecessarily. They could rise to the occasion and take advantage of outside contractors. The saving on full-time employees is obvious.
I remind Opposition Members that we would be shifting civil service employees to the private sector. There is no suggestion that they would lose their jobs. Customs and Excise debt collection is another possibility, which is also subject to variations in demand. It must be more economical.

Mr. Terry Davis: The hon. Lady says that there is no question of civil servants losing their jobs and that they are simply shifting to the private sector. Is she prepared to give a firm guarantee to that effect?

Lady Olga Maitland: I am sorry, but I did not catch the hon. Gentleman's question.

Mr. Davis: Is the hon. Lady prepared to say unequivocally that, as a result of market testing, civil servants will not lose their jobs, but will simply change employers?

Lady Olga Maitland: It is simply a matter of market forces and of moving from one area to another by natural selection. That is important. It is more economical to use half the civil servants on a permanent basis and to use half in the private sector according to need; hence the need to use local solicitors.
Home Office dog training is a more quixotic area, which could be contracted out. Until now, guard dogs and dogs that sniff for drugs have been trained by civil service dog trainers. Does one need in-house dog trainers? The Home Secretary could survive very well by using an outside service, from which I am sure he would get cheaper service and, in many cases, better value.
The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food uses the Royal Navy to mount surveillance on foreign fishing vessels which operate inside the limit. Why not use outside contractors with their own patrol boats instead? I understand that British companies are already providing such a service for companies overseas—for heaven's sake, let us use them at home.
What about engineering services? The Ministry of Defence has sub-contracted aircraft maintenance, instead of using its employees.
Catering could be contracted out. Five years ago, there were more cooks than economists at the Treasury—a strange state of affairs. Why did not the Treasury manage better and apply its financial rectitude to cookery? The answer is to contract out, put catering in the right hands and get better food, more efficient use of staff and value for money.
Why should the civil service pensions administration be considered a great sacred cow and have to be dealt with internally? The pensions work could be managed by an outside contractor. There are scores of private sector businesses providing the service for other employers. The whole pensions sphere should not be considered sacrosanct.
We can learn many lessons from the past. Where there has been competition in sections of central Government, savings have averaged 25 per cent., with no loss of quality. It is interesting to note that, when contracts have remained in-house, after close examination with outside competition, the same saving has been achieved. We must have more stringent examination of our affairs. The fact that that has not happened must mean that outside comparisons have not been made.
The Government have had great strength of character in examining the way in which we examine our affairs. They accept that we must no longer believe in the old adages about the state providing all, with other people's money being spent. We must have a more reasonable way of looking at life.
Labour Members have thrown several red herrings into the debate. For example, they talk about confidentiality.


Safeguards apply in the civil service whether the work is done in-house or outside. For example, the defence industry would not flourish if the Ministry of Defence could not trust outside contractors. The code of conduct that has existed all along works very well indeed.
Why should the honesty and integrity of private sector employees be considered any less than that existing in the public sector? In many cases, a criminal offence would be committed if information were divulged, irrespective of whether employees were in the public or private sector.
I remind the hon. Member who referred to the Chancellor of the Exchequer's affairs that if the details had been exposed to the public through a leak by the Inland Revenue, a criminal offence would have been committed. Had the work been contracted outside the civil service to a contractor, my right hon. Friend's affairs would still have been sacrosanct. Opposition Members seem committed to opposing any privatising of the civil service. They are opposed to change, irrespective of reality and modern methods of working.
I remind them that we are talking not about the core work of the civil service but about its support services, so we should concentrae on the core business of the civil service, which we are good at and can conduct efficiently, and let the experts deal with what might be called the subsidiary work. In other words, let us ensure that the country gets real value for money.

Mr. Ian Davidson: Conservative Membes have indulged in some knock-about debating and general abuse of Labour's position. It is important for us to explain precisely what we favour, because our view has been rather parodied.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Redcar (Ms. Mowlam) said, we are in favour of rigour in the provision of public services. We want efficiency, effectiveness and economy. We are also in favour—more so than Conservative Members—of equity in the provision of those services.
We support the concepts of decentralisation and devolution of implementation and we recognise that the public services must be under constant review. We have always appreciated the need for making improvements where possible, and we are keen to ensure that new ideas and systems are applied to the public service. That demonstrates our commitment to change.
We accept that the civil service should be modernised and we want many sections of it to move away from a safety-first and cannot-do attitude. The agency system has helped in that process, and we welcome it.
While the Government claim to be engaged in an exercise to improve the public service, we are bound to be cynical about their commitment to the public sector. Many people believe that the Conservative recrod shows that the Government want to destroy the public service and cast everyone concerned with it to the vagaries of the market, apart from law and order and defence—items that go to create a strong state—and a few other sectors which they feel obliged to maintain in the public sector.
The Government make the assumption that everything should go out to tender unless, for some reason, it must stay. My hon. Friends and I do not say that everything

must stay in-house. We prefer to take an objective look at where services are best provided. That is the way to determine where they should be performed.
We are in conflict with the Government on certain issues. I shall concentrate on the question of devolution as compared with contracting out. In some instances there is a discrepancy between the policy of the Government of devolving management and their determination to contract out the work done by certain agencies.
The decision whether to contract out work should be determined by whether a better service would be achieved by contracting out or by leaving the service where it is. The Government seem to have a prejudiced view and think that everything would be better done in the private sector. That has led them to try to sectionalise the work of individual units or agencies.
That has led the Government to seek to break up the work of a complete organisation, such as the National Savings bank. They then identify a section of activity, such as clerical services, cost it and make it compete. That results in the staff involved, competing for their own jobs, having an inevitable self-interest in trying to minimise the amount of work that they undertake for other sections beyond the contract that has been undertaken. There is pressure on them to have a narrower focus on what they are doing, concentrating on their own self-interest.
Managers in the public sector should be set clear targets and be left to get on with determining how best to achieve those objectives. Agencies should be examined as a whole. The managers and staff should be given an opportunity to take a realistic perspective, which does not mean artificially chopping off certain sections and contracting them out. I am not aware of staff in the private sector having artificially set targets involving a proportion of work being put out to a subsidiary, to the private sector or to the public sector. Nobody in the private sector operates in that way. People make their own decisions.
There is a contradiction between saying that targets should be established for agencies and telling people how to achieve those objectives. If the Government were genuinely committed to the principles of decentralisation and devolution, they would set rigorous targets and output figures and then tell managers, "It's your responsibility. We shall not tell you exactly how to carry out those functions."
To do otherwise is to centralise. In many ways, the Government are being more centralist than previous Governments by directing managers how to go about achieving their goals.
The process of examination and review that has been going on in the public sector over a long period—not rigorously enough, in my view—shows that the existing system can modify itself. An onus should be placed on the Government to give the existing system an opportunity to self-reform before they artificially divide work tasks.
The hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Lady Olga Maitland) said that she believed that all was likely to happen was that people presently working in the public sector would be moved into the private sector. That is unrealistic because, for many of the tasks now being contracted out or market-tested, the main expense is that of salaries and the main source of competition must come from people who undercut on salaries. That is a clear attempt to drive down wages and conditions of service. Indeed, it is a Darwinian approach. It is how the natural law of selection works.

Lady Olga Maitland: Will the hon. Gentleman give us evidence to back up his comments?

Mr. Davidson: Certainly. My former local authority lost public sector cleaning contracts to a private sector company solely on the ground that it undercut on wages. The hon. Lady may look puzzled, but it is true. If she wishes, I could take her to schools in Strathclyde where there is difficulty in recruiting, retaining and motivating cleaners because of the low wages that are being paid.
Many Conservative Members recognise the real difficulty. If local companies are competing on the basis of wage rates alone, in areas of high unemployment the bids —the cost of that work—will inevitably be driven down. But we end up with people who have been recruited because that was the only job available and who have no loyalty because as soon as a better job comes up, they are away. There is great difficulty in retaining those workers and the staff have no enthusiasm for their work.
If the Government insist that managers must market test, the managers involved must be left free to pick from the bids as they see fit, according to the criteria that they wish to apply. There is more to bids than cost. Local authorities have been obliged to accept bids solely on the basis of cost and have not been allowed to take quality into account. It is important that they be allowed to take multiple indicators into account when assessing bids.
Another point that I discussed in Committee was where the policy of contracting out clashes with another announced Government policy—dispersal. I am keen as are many of my hon. Friends from deprived areas of the country—areas which a Conservative Member called "the provinces"—to ensure that Government functions are transferred to our areas. We must be clear about what happens in circumstances where there is a clash between how a contract is allocated, if it is done solely on price, and the Government's regional policy.
An example was given earlier of the possibility of the Metropolitan police data processing contract going to the Phillipines, and the Minister treated it as if to say, "Oh well, that may happen."
People in my area would be horrified if an enormous amount of data processing work in the National Savings bank, which is one of the largest single-site employers in the entire west of Scotland, was alloweed to go somewhere else in the world. That would have a serious effect on the area's economy. The Government must be prepared to recognise that there is a clash between their policies. I hope that they will be prepared to bear in mind my point about the importance of regional policy.
From all that we have heard in this debate, it appears that Conservative Members are biased towards breaking up the public service. We have heard, in Committee and in the Chamber today, that a process of on-going review is under way. I understand that an organisation will be examined for its suitablity for agency status, an examination will be carried out with a view to contracting out and market testing, and subsequently there will then be an opportunity to sell the whole thing off. In those circumstances, it will inevitably be difficult to promote enthusiasm among the staff. If they achieve the targets, they will be working themselves out of a job.
The Government must say whether or not other principles will override their ideologically driven policy which pays little regard to the objectives of public service —to provide a first-class service to its recipients—and has

everything to do with their ideological commitment. Such a commitment should not be the main purpose of Government policy.

Mr. Roger Knapman: I shall be brief, as I am aware that two Opposition Members wish to speak and, subject to catching your eye, Madam Deputy Speaker, they will.
I have long sought this opportunity to pay tribute to the ideas and ideals of the citizens charter and to congratulate my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary on their excellent work. They are putting firm flesh on the bones of the ideas and ideals contained in the citizens charter and raising standards all round in a thoroughly practical way.
I shall also take the opportunity to thank my right hon. and hon. Friends for funding the Agricultural and Food Research Council—theirs is a wide-ranging Department, which is appropriately represented at Cabinet level. We would have liked more money—we would always like more. It came as something of a culture shock to some of the professors on the council when they realised that they might have to co-operate with the private sector to obtain backing for some of their work. That was their initial reaction, but they are now getting thoroughly used to the idea of lunching, and wining—without an "h"—and dining with industrialists, which is good news.
We must be careful, where we have a successful line of near-market research for which independent backing is obtained, that additional funding is not reduced from traditional methods of funding. I thank my right hon. and hon. Friends for their support and the interest that they take in the council. I can assure them that all those involved are grateful to them.
I heard the excellent speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier). I am glad to hear that we are even attempting some reform to obtain higher standards in the legal profession. I hope that over the next few decades something might be achieved. I also listened to the excellent speeches by my hon. Friends the Members for City of Chester (Mr. Brandreth) and for Sutton and Cheam (Lady Olga Maitland). I am afraid that they will have to listen to just three or four minutes from this old lag as I comment on the four headings originally identified by my hon. Friends.
The first topic is privatisation where appropriate. I know that when other capitalist countries started to privatise things, the Labour party was against it. When it came to selling council houses, the Labour party was against it. When other socialist countries such as France started to privatise things, the Labour party still opposed it. When Russia started to privatise things, the Labour party went a little quiet. Now that Albania is starting to privatise things, the Labour party is becoming very quiet.
I am pleased to see that the hon. Member for Dundee, East (Mr. McAllion) is present. I enjoyed a trip to America, the home of capitalism, with him, and I can see from his expression that he is taking in every idea for privatisation. Perhaps there are ramifications for the Dundee Labour party—who knows?
It is true that we have sold much of the family silver —I am proud of that and of the fact that so many other countries are following our example. To some extent, in


cash terms, but not quality terms, we are now talking about the silver plate. Let us privatise British Coal, British Rail, Companies House, the docklands light railway, the driver and vehicle operators information technology department, London Buses, the National Engineering Laboratory, Parcel Force, the vehicle inspectorate and anything else where standards can be increased and we can raise a bob or two. I am not entirely sure, because the period of research available to me tonight was not sufficient, exactly how standards are to be maintained and performance related at the national engineering laboratory, but I am sure that there are no insuperable problems there.
Competitive tendering matters and market testing were so capably dealt with by my hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester (Mr. Brandreth) that I will pass them over. There are very few sectors that are such a natural monopoly that there cannot be some competition, or comparative competition, brought into them. Initially we were criticised because British Telecom, for instance, would have a monopoly, but it is quite clear, after a period of years and the growth of the market, that competitors are increasingly coming to compete with British Telecom. No doubt it will welcome, in due course, the increased competition.
I was very glad to hear that my right hon. Friend has said, with regard to taking decisions close to the customer, which must be our constant aim,
in those instances where, for whatever reason, there is no choice but public ownership and no chance of competition being applied…our role must be to devise and apply disciplines that, in their own way, are no less demanding than open competition.
Since he said those words a few months ago, he would no doubt agree with me that the more we look into things, the fewer the cases we find in which some competition cannot be instilled. The aim of introducing competition, I believe, is that, unlike the monolithic structures of a few years ago, nowadays the buck has to stop somewhere.
I was very pleased to have the booklet "Citizen's Charter News" with the charter logo and the heading "Raising the standard"—I am not sure whether it should not be "raising the standards". From the original ideas, we now have a good idea of the very wide spread of my right hon. Friend's activities, on health, education, travel, street works, services areas—and, my word, some improved standards are needed there on a bank holiday—driving tests, railways, London Underground, utilities, post offices, employment service, the Benefits Agency, and much more besides. Everything is to do with the improvement of standards; that must be our constant aim.
There has been some criticism this week of the tables produced for certain schools. It is no great secret that in one or two cases, in the compilation of statistics, the suggestion "might do better" could apply. The basic difference between this side of the House and the other is that we believe that parents are entitled to this information and that they have enough intelligence to know that this is one of a number of factors likely to guide and guard them in choosing schools for their children. This is not a privilege for parents; it is a fundamental right. It may be that in some rural areas, such as the one that I represent, because of geography parents may not be able to make full use of those extra privileges which are rightly theirs.
In conclusion, I say to my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Front Bench: well done to date; keep up the good work.

Mr. John McAllion: Conservative Members, in particular the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Lady Olga Maitland), seemed to take great offence at the suggestion made by my hon. Friend the Member for Redcar (Ms. Mowlam) that privatisation leads to wage cuts. The hon. Lady called for evidence, and she was given some by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Govan (Mr. Davidson). I will give her some direct from the civil service itself.
The Inland Revenue in Nottingham has recently contracted out its typist and secretarial contracts to the private sector company Blue Arrow. Civil Service rates for typists are in the pay band up to £9,405 outside London; the Blue Arrow rate is £7,800, with a 20p productivity bonus. The civil service rate for personal secretaries is in the pay band up to £11,521; the Blue Arrow rate is £8,775—considerably less. If the hon. Lady does not understand now, she had better come to understand in the future that you get what you pay for. If people are looking for real value for money in the public services, they should keep jobs inside the civil service, where people are properly paid and where they reach the proper standards expected of important Government Departments.
When the Chancellor of the Duchy introduced the citizens charter White Paper in the House yesterday, he spoke of a future agenda for further action. A key part of the agenda is the extension of compulsory competitive tendering and market testing. The right hon. Gentleman told the House that these and other measures would be at the heart of the Government's agenda for the 1990s.
Before the right hon. Gentleman thrusts market testing and CCT to the heart of the Government's agenda for the next decade, he should try to understand the full implications of those processes. For instance, does he fully understand the implications of the TUPE regulations? He will know that they are the regulations that protect workers whose employer changes hands as a result of a legal transfer or merger. He will also know that the very core of the regulations is that workers' existing contracts of employment are automatically continued under the new employer. They may move from the civil service to the private sector, but under TUPE they should get the same wages, conditions, holiday entitlements and redundancy agreements.
The Thatcher Government did not introduce the regulations on their own initiative. The natural instinct of her Government was to undercut workers' rights, not to protect them. The regulations were introduced in 1981 as a result of European Community law, because they were meant to implement EC directive 770/187, which first came into force in 1979.
It took the then Tory Government two years to pass the United Kingdom legislation to give effect to this directive. Even then they tried to get off the European hook of being forced to protect workers' rights under existing contracts by excluding from the TUPE regulations transfers in the public sector described as involving non-commercial ventures. The exact words were:
Does not include any undertaking or part of an undertaking which is not of a commercial venture".
Since then, the phrase


not in the nature of a commercial venture
has been interpreted as excluding from the TUPE regulations the contracting out of public services such as catering, laundry services and cleaning services. With the ever closer European union of which we are now a part, the Government could not go on getting away with this for ever. The TUPE regulations are clearly in breach of the European directive.
Recently, the TUPE regulations' credibility received two massive blows—first, from the ruling by the European Court of Justice in the Sophie Rodmond Stichting case; and, secondly, from the High Court ruling secured by the National Association of Teachers in Further and Higher Education, in the judicial review against the Secretary of State for Education.
The European Commission has already begun proceedings against the United Kingdom Government for failure to implement the directive correctly since 1979. Moreover, clause 26 of the new Trade Union Reform and Employment Rights Bill effectively accepts that TUPE is in breach of the directive and goes some way towards trying to remedy that. It is clearly an attempt by the Government to head off the European Commission before it drags them through the European Court for being in breach of the directive—an attempt which is unlikely to work because clause 26 goes nowhere near meeting all the EC criticisms of the Government's failure to implement.
All this leaves us in an interesting situation. A number of civil service departments are already beginning to apply TUPE to contracting out. The Central Office of Information has applied TUPE to the contracting out of its photocopying services. The Department for National Savings has applied TUPE to a catering contract that it is putting out to tender, and many other Departments have delayed their market testing programmes while they seek legal advice.
A report in the Financial Times—dear to the heart of the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam—is headed:
FO drops plan for contracting-out".
It goes on to say:
The Foreign Office announced last night that it had suspended preparations to contract out services because of new regulations protecting workers' pay and conditions when they transfer to the private sector.
The Foreign Office lead is likely to be followed by other departments and underlines the extent to which the government's £1bn programme of contracting out has been thrown into confusion by the regulations.
The Minister may try to deny it, but the source for the story was an official Foreign Office on-the-record briefing, given at its press office to the journalists concerned.
I also have a copy of a letter from the Welsh Office to general managers of district health authorities and other groups which says:
The issue has arisen as a result of a request for guidance for South Glamorgan Health Authority in relation to catering contracts and we have suggested to the Authority that they should take no further steps to let contracts to a private contractor until we have legal advice. We are drawing this to the attention of all Health Authorities and NHS Trusts so that they can take the fact into account in current market testing exercises.
I also have a letter from the Home Office to the Home Office trade union which says:
The application of TUPE to contracting out is a very complex area and ought to be considered, and legal advice taken if appropriate, before the tender documents are sent out

since it will significantly affect the position of any tenderer. The general line the Home Office intends to take is that pending clarification from the centre, Invitations to Tender would make it clear that TUPE does apply unless Legal Adviser's Branch have confirmed otherwise.
Some might ask whether all this matters. Yes, it does matter, because if TUPE applies to the transfer of workers from the civil service to the private sector, many contractors will be deterred from bidding for such work. The only way in which the in-house bid can be undercut is by slashing the wages and conditions of the workers involved.
A transcript of the Radio 4 programme "Face The Facts" records John Cutner of Onyx UK, one of the companies involved in trying to win contracts from the public sector, as saying:
I think it would slightly emasculate what the Government's intention was behind the Compulsory Competitive Tendering regulations which is to reduce the costs to local authorities by opening it up to private sector tendering which would mean that if the private sector win, the employees would effectively be employed on normal private sector conditions.
That means lower wages and worse conditions.
Therefore, if the regulations are changed, and we would be obliged to take over the ex-council employees on the existing conditions, this of course would mean that our price would be higher and the price of all our competitors would be higher.
Mr. John Hall, chairman of the CBI's competing for quality committee, has already been quoted. He has said:
On the face of it, there is no longer any point in companies taking part in tenders for public services.
Mr. Hall said that contractors might find it hard to take on existing work forces profitably.
The Minister may argue that it does not matter if the private sector does not try to get the jobs that he is putting through the market testing programme, but it does matter. How else will the 44,000 new jobs be market-tested and put into the private sector if no private sector companies are prepared to pay for existing wages and conditions in the civil service?
The Minister once said that he was interested only in the most competitive supplier and that whether it was public or private did not matter to him; he was interested only in value for money. That is what he tells the House of Commons, but I have here a note from the Treasury which was sent to the principal finance officers, principal establishment officers and others, paragraph 2 of which clearly says:
The Government's policy is to restrict the size of the public sector and in general the presumption is that services should wherever possible be provided by the private sector rather than the public sector".
The Government's policy is to privatise as much of the public sector as possible. If the TUPE regulations are to be applied they will not be able to achieve the aim of privatising those jobs.
In the past decade, tens of thousands of workers in local government, the national health service and the civil service have lost their jobs or had their wages cut and their conditions made worse as a result of contracting out. Clause 26 in the new employment Bill cannot be applied retrospectively and nor can the TUPE regulations. But the European directive, which came into force in Britain in 1979, can be applied retrospectively.
Trade unions will be making sure that applications are made to the European Court to apply that directive retrospectively to workers affected by it since 1979. Far from contracting out being at the heart of the


Government's agenda in the 1990s, the Minister will find that it will be driven off that agenda by the application of the European directive.

Dr. Tony Wright: As time is short, I will go to the heart of the matter. It has been argued that this debate is about different issues. We heard from the hon. Member for the City of Chester (Mr. Brandreth) that it is about the state of a portakabin on Chester station, and from the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Lady Olga Maitland) that it has to do with matters such as dog training. Earlier, the Chancellor of the Duchy said that it was nothing more than a question of management adjustment, yet important voices outside the House who understand the issues—I do not mean just the civil service unions—say that market testing is a major constitutional change and ought to be treated as such.
A new managerialism is sweeping across public services throughout the western and eastern world, and it encompasses all ideological perspectives. The key issue is the terms on which it is implemented, yet the House has not quite grasped that. I may add that, although it is late on Thursday evening, it is shameful that only a dozen right hon. and hon. Members are present in the Chamber to debate such a major change.
The Government are determined to cut the public sector, costs and size of the civil service using a variety of strategies and from a number of directions. The terms on which they are doing so give everything away. Are the Government really concerned about the citizen rather than consumers? The apostrophe in "The Citizen's Charter" is very important. A consumer is concerned about a school's position in the league table, whereas a citizen is concerned about the quality of all the schools in the league table.
That is the crucial distinction between the approach to public services on this side of the House and that taken by the Government. One attitude is, "I'm all right, Jack," and the other is, "How is Jack down the road doing?" That will always be the fundamental ideological difference between the Labour and Conservative parties.
If cost-cutting were not the thrust behind the Government's actions, we would be considering the quality of public services and, for example, measures to extend the activities of the National Audit Office. The most recent report of the Comptroller and Auditor General states that there is massive scope for fast dealing—for making a fast buck and for fraud—in the contracting-out process.
We would also be arguing, given the new spread of Government activity, that only 50 value-for-money audits annually are inadequate. If cost-cutting is not the Government's prime consideration, they would not have resisted the establishing of a Select Committee to examine the citizens charter process. We are told that the charter goes to the core of Government policy, yet they refuse monitoring and regulation and do everything themselves.
The danger signs are seen every time that a right hon. or hon. Member receives a letter from a Minister—as I have, every week for the past three weeks—stating, "Don't write to me any more about these issues—write to the head of the agency." The danger signs are seen every time that we see the fragmentation of the civil service and hear from constituents about quality being driven down because of a preoccupation with cutting costs.
Last week, a local authority carpenter asked me, "Why am I told to use wood that I know is rotten? Because that is the only way that we could get the contract." The same story is told across the length and breadth of the public services, because no independent, external, regulatory agency is monitoring what is happening.
Conservative Members completely misrepresent our approach to public services. Two approaches are currently on offer. The first can simply be called "business government". We have heard of it through the ages: it basically means, "Turn the business of government over to business men." In the past, it has been presented from time to time as an eccentric opinion; this is the first time that it has been taken seriously and placed at the heart of government.
My hon. Friend the Member for York (Mr. Bayley) talked about Stalin, but that approach is really Lenin's idea of getting rid of policy and turning it into administration. What the Government are offering is one version of the end of politics: politics, representation and participation become irrelevant, and everything is dissolved into administration.
The second approach on offer is our approach. We propose a renewal of the public service tradition, to make it much more powerful and responsive to users. One approach renews the tradition; the other damages it, and may even destroy it.

Ms. Kate Hoey: Despite the small number of hon. Members who are present, I applaud the quality of the debate—even if I cannot applaud the quantity.
Opposition Members feel strongly that we are tremendously well served by our public service—in the civil service, local authorities, the national health service, schools and, indeed, the House. Certainly the civil service is represented in the Officials' Box in terms of quantity, and I presume that there is quality there, too.
My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Govan (Mr. Davidson) summed up Labour's position admirably. We are in favour of efficiency and quality, but we are also in favour of extending access and choice. We want to empower people. However, we are also in favour of change when it is proved to be necessary. The Government seem to view the public services purely in terms of a contractual relationship between consumer and provider. We care about the consumer too, but many of our citizens are in no position to have their needs met, and the Government and the community must help to meet those needs.
Like my hon. Friend the Member for Redcar (Ms. Mowlam), I have no children—indeed, tonight's Opposition Front Bench is very much a childless one. That, however, does not lessen my commitment to extending and developing the provision of good-quality child care for everyone.
Let me mention some aspects that the Minister has not dealt with in detail. First, the citizens charter promised to make the business of government more open and acceptable, and therefore more accountable. Similar claims were made at the launch of the next steps programme. The Treasury and Civil Service Select Committee's last report on next steps made the following recommendation:


The provision of information is vital if agencies are to be accepted by Parliament and the public. We consider it a necessary counterweight to the Minister's voluntary relinquishing of control over matters of routine.
The Select Committee welcomed the publication of business and corporate plans and recommended that
all agencies should publish them, unless there are pressing commercial reasons which make this inappropriate".
The Government added that it was necessary
to protect other sensitive information".
There are, in fact, at least 41 agencies whose corporate plans are tagged "commercial—in confidence", and are therefore unavailable for public scrutiny. At least 30 agencies' business plans are similarly restricted. The situation reaches farcical proportions in some agencies. For example, the Transport Research Laboratory describes its business plans as "commercial—in confidence", but they are available for £995. That is commercial, but it is confidential only to the general public. The only people who will benefit are large motor manufacturers and the road industry lobby; few members of the public will do so. We heard little about open government from the Minister.
I am pleased that the Government are catching up on our commitment to decentralise such services closer to the communities that they serve, but I repeat that many of their policies often serve to erode local democracy and accountability.
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster added little to the prospects for improving the civil service. The announcement that up to 44,000 of the 560,000 civil service jobs are to be market-tested will have been a sharp pre-Christmas blow to the morale of the service. The Minister has conceded that good morale is vital to the implementation of quality public services, and we agree, so how on earth does he expect the morale of the Inland Revenue's typing and secretarial staff in Glasgow to be anything other than at rock bottom when they read in an advertisement in The Times that their jobs are likely to be given to others in January?
Many hon. Members have expressed concern about the serious issue of confidentiality. The independence, impartiality, objectivity and confidentiality of the civil service are being undermined by market testing and privatisation. Much sympathy has been expressed for the personal difficulties of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but many of our constituents constantly experience similar problems with debt companies, hire purchase companies and, indeed, banks. That is the reality of private sector involvement in confidential areas.
The role of the civil service is solely to serve the Government of the day. The role of private companies is much more varied and they have a number of different interests. Civil servants in the Inland Revenue have an exemplary record on confidentiality. The civil service is respected as being objective and free from outside influence. If we go ahead with this proposal, we shall be going down a slippery road indeed.

Mr. Knapman: Will the hon. Lady give way?

Ms. Hoey: I cannot, because I know that the Minister wants 20 minutes compared with my 15 minutes.
If the Government are determined to push through such changes on dogmatic grounds, I hope that they will at least have the good sense to agree to our request to

implement all necessary measures to ensure objectivity. I call on the Minister to accept our invitation to form an independent body to advise on the maintenance of confidentiality in services being considered for privatisation and to regulate and monitor confidentiality post-privatisation.
I move a little from the civil service to draw some parallels with public servants in local authorities. Compulsory competitive tendering has been central to the Government's approach to local government. How can they seriously propose to introduce market testing and privatisation into branches of the civil service at the whim of Ministers, as was stated tonight, and on a strategic basis without considering an in-house bid? The Minister must reply to the questions that we have asked about in-service bids. If a service is efficiently and effectively provided by civil servants and if local managers and workers believe that they can beat off external bidders, are the Government saying that managers and workers will not be allowed to bid? That would not offer a level playing field and would be similar to ordering the team off before they had been allowed to start the game.
Many examples have been given, particularly by my hon. Friend the Member for York (Mr. Bayley), of good practices by Labour authorities that owe everything to good management and local accountability. My hon. Friend the Member for Redcar cited many examples of privatised services getting it wrong, and I shall contrast that with one or two examples of how Labour councils have got it right, in-house.
York has already been mentioned, but I also cite the London borough of Merton, which, after moving to Labour control, found itself able to rebuild many of the services which had been dismantled by the former Conservative administration. In the aftermath of the utterly conclusive rejection of opting out by schools, including the Prime Minister's school, the council has been able to offer in-house cleaning contracts of a better standard and at a winning price, compared with the existing privatised service That has been achieved through better management, and by paying a sufficiently decent wage to avoid the problems of low morale, high turnover, frequent sickness and low commitment to the job. Better pay and conditions, happier staff and cleaner schools are all possible, because the council is not trying simply to make a fast buck out of the exercise.
Newcastle city council provides another example. It runs an architects department so successful, especially in designing energy conservation schemes, that it is in great demand from the private sector. The market has shown that the service is not only cheaper but better overall. Only the Government's absurd rules prevent the department from selling its expertise to the private sector, insisting that it be sold only to other councils.
I hope that their own experience will enable hon. Members from both sides of the House to see through the Government's boasts about cutting costs. The hon. Member for Suffolk, Central (Mr. Lord) made an interesting speech, showing an intelligent scepticism and open-mindedness. Unfortunately, he is no longer in the Chamber—or perhaps it is just as well that he cannot hear me praising him. The hon. Gentleman pointed to many of the deficiences in the Government's handling of the move towards privatisation, and he asked, as we all should, whether we are going down the right road to improving quality.
The hon. Member for Suffolk, Central urged caution over British Rail privatisation, too. Despite the rail charter, InterCity has already applied to the Department of Transport to downgrade some of the standards and Network SouthEast has applied to downgrade the Kent coastal line services on the grounds of inability to maintain operating equipment due to lack of investment and falling passenger receipts. A charter for train passengers is not much good if they do not have a train to travel on in the first place.
Elsewhere, in other branches of public service, the Government are forcing through change for change's sake. Will they not concede the basic principle that quality and value for money are improved by good and responsive management and by motivated work forces, working to meet the aims of their local communities? Those shared aims are not achieved simply as a result of being in the private sector or the public sector. They are certainly not achieved by cuts in funding, which inevitably lead to cuts in services.
I hope that the Government have taken on board the many constructive comments which have been made this evening and will feel able to build on the areas of agreement and deal with the concerns raised, rather than simply exaggerating and misrepresenting the areas on which we fundamentally disagree. I hope that the Minister will undertake to return to the House with some answers and some concrete and positive proposals to address those important questions.

The parliamentary Secretary, Office of Public Service and Science (Mr. Robert Jackson): I begin by welcoming the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Ms. Hoey) on what I believe was her debut at the Dispatch Box—and very elegantly she carried it out.
A combination of events this week has given the House a full opportunity to discuss the future of the public services. There was question time on Monday; we published the citizens charter White Paper yesterday, and there was a statement and a debate on that. We had debates last week on the Second Reading and the Committee stage of the Civil Service (Management Functions) Bill. Tonight we have this debate.
We can all agree that that has been a welcome opportunity to debate an important set of subjects. I agree with the hon. Member for Cannock and Burntwood (Dr. Wright) on that, and I share his regret that others have not seen the importance of the issues at stake in this debate.
The debates have brought out clearly the range, the depth and the strength of the Government's commitment to the public service and to the improvement of the public service. They have also brought out clearly the strength of our commitment to the public service, to its staff, to its traditions, to its values and to its ethos. Nothing in our reforms is inconsistent with that commitment.
I was also happy to note how this debate has brought out the extent of agreement between the parties about what our objectives for the public services should be, and about the need to maintain and to improve the quality of our public services. That was very welcome. However, from the speech by the hon. Member for Redcar (Ms. Mowlam) and from the tone and the temper of many other speeches by Opposition Members, it appears that there

continue to be some disagreements between the Government and the Opposition about the means to the shared end of public service improvements.
I can express the difference simply. The Government are committed to public service: the Opposition are committed to public provision. A real difference in perspective is summed up there. The hon. Member for Cannock and Burntwood spoke briefly, but pregnantly, when he pointed out that there was a new managerialism sweeping the world. That has led the Government to seek to identify clearly each particular function within the public service and to put it on to a more businesslike basis. The key to that—I will deal with the point made by the hon. Member for Glasgow, Govan (Mr. Davidson) later —is a clearer specification of the objectives of each function and the embodiment of those clearer specifications in contracts.
The hon. Member for Redcar does not seem to quarrel with that stage of the analysis. She appears to go along with the view of the left-wing think tanks and of some of the progressive Labour authorities in favouring the idea of management by contract. However, she seems to draw back—this is the key point between us—from the next logical stage of the process.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Knapman) percipiently asked, having established a contractual relationship between a Minister and a public sector adviser, why not test the competitiveness of the potential public sector contractors by enabling the private sector to compete for the contract? I put it to the hon. Member for Redcar that it simply is not logical to say, as she seems to, that she is in favour of market testing provided that the private sector is not permitted to compete for the contract. After all, what else is market testing but testing in the marketplace? Why are the Opposition caught up in that illogicality?
I can think of only one explanation, which was sapiently pointed out by the hon. Member for Truro (M r. Taylor), who told me that he could not be here for the winding-up speeches. The explanation is the Labour party's prejudice against the private sector. That was reflected all too eloquently—it made up most of the speech by the hon. Member for Redcar—in the catalogue of petty criticisms of the private sector. It embodied all the old Labour party prejudices against private business.

Mr. McAllion: Will the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 1981 apply to every civil service job that is put out to competitive tender?

Mr. Jackson: I will come to the hon. Gentleman's point about TUPE, so he does not need to remind me of it.
Another old Labour party prejudice was on display tonight—the prejudice in favour of high spending on producer interests. I pick up a point made by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr. Davis) by referring to a point that was well made by my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Lady Olga Maitland).
It is surprising to hear a distinguished member of the Public Accounts Committee speak slightingly of the Government's perfectly proper concern to ensure that the cost to the taxpayer of providing public service is kept at the lowest level compatible with satisfactory quality. How can the hon. Gentleman allow himself to slight that approach—especially as he will, I am sure, have heard what my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of


Lancaster said about our agreement with the Treasury that all savings from market testing will be retained by the Departments concerned and will be ploughed back into the services they provide to the public?
The hon. Member for Vauxhall asked me about two points of detail, the first of them on in-house bids. We encourage in-house bids in the context of market testing but we are not insisting that they should be mandatory. That would, in effect, give a veto to the employees concerned. We cannot compel employees to put in a bid: if they do not come forward, that should not exclude market testing.
Confidentiality has arisen again and again. We do not accept the Opposition's idea, which seems to be that servants of the public who work in the private sector have a lower standard of integrity than public servants who work in the public sector.
To the hon. Members for Truro and for York (Mr. Bayley), I would say that it is not good enough to complain that some targets for public services are not being met. Of course some of them are not being met. It would be deeply suspicious if all our targets were met.
I see that the hon. Member for York is in his place. He asked a series of specific questions about performance against targets under the patients charter. They were good questions and I shall come back to him later on the detailed points that he raised. Meanwhile, I remind him, and others who have made comments about targets, that targets for the public service are now being set for the first time and that the performance of those services against those targets is now being monitored for the first time. That is what is new and what is important.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester (Mr. Brandreth) on a graceful and witty speech and on acting during the debate as my honorary parliamentary private secretary—he will soon be a real PPS, I am sure. He brought out well the important point that the Government's programme for public service reform is welcomed by many people working in the public service who see in that programme opportunities to do better, both in terms of assuming new responsibilities and in terms of providing better-quality services. My hon. Friend was also right to stress that investment in the public service is not only a matter of investment of cash; it is a matter of investing in new thinking, new structures and better management.
I should not like to forget the point made by the hon. Member for Truro, to which I now return. He asked whether the Government were ensuring that the users of public services were being consulted about the setting of targets. The answer to his question is yes, and I invite him to look at the citizens charter White Paper, which details our plans for regular surveys of the customers of public services.
My hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) made an eloquent speech, bringing home from personal and professional knowledge the importance of the new courts charter launched yesterday. I hope that he will maintain his close interest in the courts charter and assist us in the Office of Public Service and Science and the whole House in the work of applying that charter and

progressively improving its effectiveness—because we intend that our charters should be upgraded and improved in the light of experience.
My hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam made a valuable point about the concerns expressed, especially by the hon. Member for Hodge Hill, about jobs in the civil service. She pointed out that market testing does not necessarily entail any net loss of jobs. Jobs will stay in house if the in-house team provide the best value for money. Where contracting out offers better value for money, I give the assurance that contractors will be encouraged to take relevant staff; otherwise, Departments—again, I give an assurance—will make every effort to redeploy staff or absorb them through natural wastage. That has happened in the vast majority of cases in the past four years, and I see no reason why it should not continue to be the pattern of market testing in future.
The hon. Member for Govan continued in the thoughtful and constructive vein of his speeches on Second Reading and in Committee—where he made an active contribution—on the Civil Service (Management Functions) Bill. He articulated his fears about the fragmentation of the civil service and the loss of what he called a holistic sense of responsibility in the new regime by the management of contracts and competitive tendering.
The Government recognise that that could be a danger, but it will happen only if the policy is pressed to exaggerated lengths, which I do not believe will happen. Our watchwords in the policy of market testing will be balance and common sense, and I have no doubt that that will he in conformity with the mood of public servants who, like the hon. Member for Govan, exhibit a sense of balance and common sense. The hon. Member for Dundee, East (Mr. McAllion), asked about the implications of the TUPE regulations for market testing. I am happy to give the hon. Gentleman the assurance he sought: the TUPE regulations do not conflict with the contracting out or market testing of work in the public sector.

Mr. McAllion: Will the TUPE regulations apply in every case in which a civil service job is put out to competitive tender?

Mr. Jackson: The TUPE regulations have always applied to transfers. The amendment to another Bill that the Standing Committee is examining simply makes it clear that the regulations can apply irrespective of the commercial status of the employer. That being the case, organisations tendering under the compulsory competitive tendering programme must take into account the possible effects of the regulations and directives. There is nothing new in that.
I turn to the characteristically thoughtful speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Central (Mr. Lord), who emphasised the importance of leadership. I agree with him. The key point which I hope he will recognise is that the changes which we are making to the structure of public services will create new opportunities for leadership in the provision of public services.
The central theme of our management changes is devolution and decentralisation of responsibility, together with a much clearer specification of the performance standards. Local leadership is responsible for the delivery of those standards. My hon. Friend will have seen that


leadership at work in the schools and hospitals in his constituency. The principle will be applied increasingly widely in other fields of public service.
Many of the speakers in this interesting and worthwhile debate about the public service have focused on the citizens charter. That is right and proper, because the citizens charter is the part of the Government's public service reform agenda which is most visible to our constituents. I stress the connection between the citizens charter and our public service reform agenda.
Too many people, especially in the London media, have not yet understood that the citizens charter is not simply a set of pious aspirations. The charter is integrally bound up with the far-reaching changes that we are making in the machinery of government. The essence of the changes lies in the combination of decentralisation and responsibility for service delivery with the specification of performance targets and the embodiment of those targets in con tracts which are increasingly open to competition. That will provide a powerful mechanism for systematically drafting standards of quality and performance in the public sector.
Let me simply say that this is the agenda for the 1990s. Although we are grateful for signs of support from the Opposition for the agenda, I am nevertheless happy that this debate has confirmed that the agenda continues to be dominated by the Conservative party.

Mr. Tim Boswell (Lords Commissioner to the Treasury): I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

UN Peacekeeping Operations

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Boswell.]

Mr. Cyril D. Townsend (Bexleyhealth): I am delighted to have this opportunity to draw to the attention of the House, as I last did in an Adjournment debate in March 1989 and 10 years before that, the expansion and success of the United Nations peacekeeping operations. I also want to mention some of the current problems and put forward ideas on future developments.
I warmly welcome my right hon. and learned Friend the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, who has recently taken over responsibility for this area of policy. This short decade will given him the opportunity to tell the House his personal thinking on this topic and the official views of the Foreign Office. His speech will be listened to and read in Hansard tomorrow with great care.
The award of the Nobel peace prize in 1988 to United Nations peacekeeping forces highlighted the renewed interest in that form of intervention and its part in the peaceful settlement of disputes. It highlighted the ending of the vastly disagreeable, dangerous and wasteful cold war. It gave a new emphasis to the work of the United Nations and its charter.
Russia now supports the United Nations in the peacekeeping aspect of its international responsibilities. There have been many—clearly far too many—new demands on United Nations peacekeeping. Commitments have grown far faster than resources. Let me define my terms. I see peacekeeping as the use of an international—

It being Ten o'clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Boswell.]

Mr. Townsend: I see peacekeeping as the use of an international force by invitation to reduce violence. I am not discussing the use of military force to liberate a country such as Kuwait, impose order or suppress an opponent. I shall not refer this evening to the protection of the Kurds in Iraq or the need for better protection of the marsh Arabs in southern Iraq. My right hon. and learned Friend the Minister will be interested to know that I hope to have a chance to refer to the marsh Arabs tomorrow morning.
As a former regular soldier, I believe that peacekeeping has become an essential part in the 1990s of the work done by the United Nations for international harmony and, above all, security. Obviously, peacekeeping must always be properly and carefully considered and then authorised by the Security Council in New York.
I am acutely aware of some obvious problems today, but surely there is one area of United Nations activity in which we can build on progress already made. It would be a dereliction of duty not to try to do so. I am describing an invention of the United Nations which is still evolving in a variety of forms to match a range of problems. It may take the form of patrolling buffer zones between two armed opponents or checking troop levels or even making sure that elections are not disrupted by violence. Nothing quite like that role existed for the old League of Nations. It is not even mapped out in the charter.
For several decades, at least one United Nations force has been on duty at any given time in some corner of the globe. Many thousands of soldiers have given their lives while attempting to keep the peace. Substantially more than 100,000 soldiers from one third of the world's armies have worn the pale blue beret or helmet. Japanese soldiers have just joined the ranks of the United Nations.
United States forces watched over the two truces of 1948 between Israel and its Arab neighbours. In 1949 they watched over the ceasefire in Kashmir and showed the world that a relatively small number of military observers could help to maintain a ceasefire. In 1956, after the Suez fiasco, they supervised the withdrawal of Israeli, British and French forces. In 1960, events in the Congo tied up 20,000 United Nations soldiers for four years.
I suggest that UN peacekeeping has been shown by experience since 1948 to be more effective than unilateral, bilateral or multilateral intervention from outside the control of the United Nations. The ill-fated multinational force in the Lebanon, in which the United Kingdom took part under American control, helps to make my point.
I turn to Britain's sterling contribution to United Nations peacekeeping. I only wish that it were better known. One purpose of this debate is to give it some publicity. British soldiers have proved themselves particularly good at peacekeeping. They know how to be firm but fair. Years of using minimum force in aid of a civil power in Borneo, Aden, Belize and Zimbabwe have given them an enviable record, which few other countries can match.
Peacekeeping is superb training for our defence forces, giving them a rare opportunity for overseas service outside Germany, which has real value for the young non-commissioned officer and the newly joined soldier who seeks a bit of excitement.
Recently, British signallers served with the United Nations force in Namibia. They performed with every satisfaction and, I have no doubt, reaped enormous benefits from their time with the other troops in the United Nations transitional assistance group, UNTAG, in a fascinating part of southern Africa. It was no surprise to me that Britain was subsequently asked to send a training team to Namibia, which leaves in April next year, its work being completed.
I am not convinced that the study of UN-style peacekeeping receives sufficient attention in the British Army. I am advised by those in a position to know that training in peacekeeping of officers and units could be further improved. They know a lot—they do not know all there is to know. The Nordic countries are perhaps better than us at co-ordinating the training of staff and technical officers for duties within United Nations peacekeeping forces.
The Minister will know that British soldiers will be asked to do far more work for the United Nations and they must be 100 per cent. trained for it. May I please be told in a letter how much time a British officer gives in cadet and staff colleges in 1992 to the study of United Nations peacekeeeping?
A few years ago I spent a fascinating morning with 40 Royal Marine Commando, who were on duty with the United Nations along the so-called green line in Nicosia and had reached a rare peak of proficiency. I should like

to ask the Minister about the United Kingdom contribution to the United Nations force in Cyprus. We play the main role within that force, which has been in Cyprus since the ethnic fighting in 1964, and we administer it from our sovereign bases—a major undertaking.
The United Kingdom force is to be reduced by 100, from a total of 755, as part of a general reduction in troop levels. Of the other three contributors, Denmark plans to withdraw its entire 341 strong contingent; Austria is to reduce its commitment from 410 to about 300; and Canada will reduce its 575 troops to 510. We are told that those countries feel that their contributions could be better deployed elsewhere; and of course there will be financial considerations. Incidentally, it is wrong that the burden is borne by the Foreign Office and not by the Ministry of Defence.
The latest effort to solve the Cyprus problem has failed and our decision has been ill-received in Cyprus. What talks took place with President Vassiliou—a wonderful Commonwealth leader—before our announcement? Turkey has an occupying force of more than 20,000 in the north and the Greek Cypriots believe that a thinning out of United Nations forces will put the south at a disadvantage. It would also suggest a lack of interest in Cyprus. As a guarantor power, Britain has a special and unique responsibility for that beautiful but tragic European island.
I move on to Cambodia, where I am proud of our experienced military observers with the United Nations transitional authority in Cambodia, UNTAC. However, the news from that unfortunate country is very disturbing and the United Nations peace force may collapse, endangering United Nations troops taking part in that large and expensive operation. There have been all too many ceasefire violations. Violence and intimidation are widespread and the elections are in jeopardy. I hear that the dreaded Khmer Rouge is increasing the area it controls. The House will want to hear the latest news on the situation from my right hon. and learned Friend.
Hon. Members will wish me to raise the question of our involvement in the former Yugoslavia, where there are well-armed warlords, thugs and bandits as well as the established military forces. While I fully supported the dispatch of medical personnel, engineers and signallers to the UN forces before the House rose for the summer recess, I have grave reservations about the dispatch of the Cheshire Regiment, a fine, down-to-earth and highly professional unit with an outstanding commanding officer. They have been placed in a difficult and vulnerable position. The carrying of humanitarian aid is normally left to United Nations agencies and civilian transport. I wish the battalion well and know that it will perform well, but I hope that it will be withdrawn before too long. The Government know as well as I do how easy it is to commit troops and how difficult it is subsequently to withdraw them.
We are grappling with centuries-old feuds in difficult, heavily wooded and mountainous country. There is a strict limit on how much can be achieved and how much Britain should get involved. In that respect, Turkey and eight Balkan countries have urged the development of UN forces in Kosovo. Where do the Government stand on that request?
I must refer to the UN forces in Lebanon. Few people appreciate that Britain administers that force, too, from our sovereign base in Cyprus. Since it was established in


1978, the force has suffered 200 fatalities. Its mandate must be strengthened. Israel is responsible for the South Lebanese army, which regularly fires on UNIFIL soldiers. I deplore what has been happening in southern Lebanon. Israel should withdraw forthwith, as required by UN resolution 425, and UNIFIL must be allowed to deploy to the international border.
The time is ripe to look anew at the money and machinery for, and conduct of, UN peacekeeping operations. At a time when the UN has acquired a wider and generally more accepted role, it is essential that some changes are made. At present, there is a crisis over funding. Britain has a superb record of paying the UN the full amount on time. The United States has a disgraceful record and owes $202 million to the separate and vital peacekeeping account. It plans to pay that over a five-year period, but the money and example are needed now.
Does the Minister support the call for the reactivation of the military staff committee with a wider membership and better terms of reference? Why should countries such as Canada, Nepal and Fiji, which can boast considerable peacekeeping experience, be excluded in the 1990s? Does he consider that the standard operating procedures for United Nations forces are adequate and, if not, how can they be improved?
I would like to see the assembling of a cadre of international experts to facilitate the dispatch of United Nations forces. It would include specialists in logistics, communications and training. They should be given a proper database which would cover who could be called on and how much notice would be required. In recent years, the construction of the United Nations force has frequently looked clumsy and amateurish.
It is important also that United Nations peacekeepers have access to the latest appropriate technology. That includes satellite communications and navigational aids, night surveillance equipment, including infra-red aids and listening devices such as our troops employ at night in Northern Ireland. To illustrate my point, electronic devices could help to reduce the possibility of surprise attack across the border and help to reduce tensions in the area.
Could consideration also be given to that cadre at the United Nations having a highly-trained and mobile disaster relief element? That could assist particularly in poorer and less developed countries after earthquakes, cyclones or major chemical or nuclear leaks.
I hope that I have said enough to activate the Government. Britain could and should use its privileged position as a permanent member of the Security Council to strengthen the world body's peacekeeping role. Unless we are careful, demand for United Nations peacekeeping will far exceed the United Nations' military and financial resources.
Experience suggests that a comparatively small United Nations force can reduce tension and limit aggression, thus giving diplomats a chance to reach a peaceful settlement of an international dispute. United Nations peacekeeping has proved itself. It is good news and practical. It is no woolly, over-idealistic pipedream. The blue helmets have been a success in many difficult and complex situations. It would be splendid to see this country mark out the way forward at the United Nations.

The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr. Douglas Hogg): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath (Mr. Townsend) on selecting this subject for the Adjournment debate. It is an important issue which he has raised in the past and it is right that the House should focus on peacekeeping by the United Nations. I accept my hon. Friend's definition of the term "peacekeeping" and I think that I can respond within the definition to many of the questions that he has posed.
One has only to look at the newspapers to see evidence of the increasingly important role being played by the United Nations in conflicts the world over. In Croatia, Bosnia, Cambodia, Angola, Mozambique and Somalia, United Nations personnel are engaged in trying to solve a range of different problems. Those are only the operations receiving current attention in the newspapers. There are many more: Cyprus, central America and the middle east, all of which contribute to the resolution of local conflicts.
There has been a dramatic expansion in United Nations peacekeeping in recent years, in terms of both numbers of operations and numbers of troops on the ground. Since 1988, 13 new peacekeeping operations have been established—the same number as in the whole period between 1948 and 1987. At the beginning of 1992, the number of United Nations civil and military personnel deployed on peacekeeping operations was about 11,500. Today, the figure is some 51,000, and rising.
Not only has the number of operations increased; so, too has the complexity of those operations. The United Nations transitional authority in Cambodia, the United Nation's biggest and most ambitious operation to date, is effectively administering the country in the run-up to the elections, in addition to its talks of repatriating refugees, training in mine clearance, holding human rights education campaigns and registering voters—to name but a few of UNTAC's responsibilities.
The United Kingdom's involvement in UN peacekeeping operations has also increased substantially in recent years. With the recent deployment in Bosnia, there will be more than 3,000 British troops on the ground under UN command, making us the third largest troop contributor after France and Canada. We have also seconded experienced military staff to the field operations division in the UN to help to improve the logistics back-up for UN forces on the ground.
My hon. Friend rightly said that the United Kingdom forces bring great skills to bear, and there are further skills that they can learn. He was correct to identify the Nordic countries as a source of those further skills. We are looking to the Nordic countries for the possibility of further training. My hon. Friend is entirely right when he says that service with peacekeeping forces will become an ever-increasing part of the military career of the average British soldier.
My hon. Friend referred specifically to Bosnia. You, Madam Speaker, and other hon. Members will have watched with considerable pride and concern the deployment of British troops in Bosnia, particularly those from the Cheshire Regiment. They are clearly doing an extremely important job in circumstances that are difficult and that are sure to become more difficult as the winter closes in.
My right hon. Friend the Minister of State for the Armed Forces covered our involvement in Bosnia in detail


in last week's debate, so I shall not go into too much detail now. My hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath raised the issue of the length of deployment, which is 12 months. We shall review the possibility of a further extension of that deployment towards the end of the 12 months. At the end of that period, we must determine whether it would be right further to extend the time that British troops spend in Bosnia.
As my hon. Friend well knows, the purpose of the troops is humanitarian. Their purpose is, essentially, to convey humanitarian supplies, and also, in appropriate circumstances, to escort refugees. Their purpose is not to fight their way through but to proceed by negotiation, although they have the ability to defend themselves and those for whom they have responsibility. They have already opened fire for that purpose.
My hon. Friend spoke of Kosovo and asked whether we would accede to the Turkish suggestion that there should be a United Nations peacekeeping force in Kosovo. It is important to remember that Kosovo is part of Serbia —a sovereign state. That fact distinguishes it from other parts of former Yugoslavia. At present, a team of observers from the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe is in Kosovo. The observers' principal purpose is to diffuse tension.
I see considerable advantages in the presence of a United Nations team of observers in Kosovo, as they could reinforce the efforts of the CSCE team. However, that would need the consent of the Government of Serbia because Kosovo is part of Serbia. I do not think that, at least for the foreseeable future, we shall see a peacekeeping force of the sort that I think that my hon. Friend envisages, in Kosovo. I make a distinction between a peacekeeping force and a team of observers.
The involvement in Bosnia demonstrates clearly the complex situation faced by United Nations forces on the ground—the appalling combination of ethnic conflict, territorial disputes and humanitarian tragedy is, unfortunately, becoming more and more commonplace, and does not make it an easy environment for United Nations troops.
The increase in the range and complexity of peacekeeping operations is putting enormous pressure on the Secretary-General and his staff. It was the recognition of this new environment that lay behind my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister's proposal at the Security Council last January, endorsed by colleagues, for a report on ways in which the United Nations could reinforce its capacity for preventive diplomacy, peacekeeping and peacemaking. The Secretary-General's report in response to this proposal was published in July.
As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said in his speech to the United Nations General Assembly in September, the Community believes that the report contains a very important collection of proposals. Among these proposals are a number of new areas for United Nations activity, some of which are already resulting in concrete activity.
A good example is co-operation with regional organisations, and a good example of that is the way in

which the United Nations and the European Community came together in the London conference to address the tragedy of what was Yugoslavia.
Another example also to be identified within what was Yugoslavia is preventive diplomacy. A current proposal to consider a pre-emptive United Nations presence in Macedonia is a good illustration of that. My hon. Friend did not particularly mention Macedonia, but I think that he too would welcome the possibility of a United Nations team of observers in Macedonia to assist in the defusing of tension.
Against the background of these positive proposals, a dialogue is going on between the United Nations secretariat and member states on the sort of forces that they might be prepared to make available to the United Nations for peacekeeping operations. The dialogue also addresses the kind of specific questions that my hon. Friend posed—for example, the question of the military committee. I believe that it would be premature for me, or indeed any other Minister, and probably for any Minister of any participating country, to reach any conclusive views at this stage.
My hon. Friend posed the question of the peacekeeping force in Cyprus and he is right in saying that this is another area where United Kingdom troops are playing a key role. There are about 800—he said 750, my brief says 800; there is not much between us—United Kingdom troops on the ground. The security position in Cyprus is now a great deal more stable than at any time since 1974 and it is the subject, of course, of continuing political dialogue under United Nations auspices. I very much hope that an agreement on a lasting settlement can be reached.
I certainly accept that the force has played a vital role in maintaining a climate in which it is possible for a settlement to be negotiated, but I think that the size and format of the force that is required to stabilise the situation have changed over time and I believe that it is possible to reduce the force present to enable contributing countries to contribute more troops to other parts of the world where the position is more acute.
I say specifically to my hon. Friend that I do not believe that the thinning out of the United Nations force in Cyprus reduces the security that is acquired by its presence. I do not believe that it is the numbers of the United Nations force in Cyprus that give stabilising security; I believe that it is the fact of its presence. Therefore, although I listened very carefully to what my hon. Friend said about the consequences of thinning out, so long as there is a substantial presence of United Nations forces in Cyprus, the strategic objective is attained.
A range of other questions will have to be addressed over a period. My hon. Friend, I know, has won the ballot for 4 December and I am to have the pleasure of responding to his debate then. I fancy that he and I will be pursuing this debate for some time to come, including tomorrow morning, Madam Speaker, because my hon. Friend hopes to catch your eye or the eye of one of your deputies in the course of tomorrow's debate. I look forward, therefore, to pursuing this discussion with my hon. Friend tomorrow and on 4 December.

That being so. I think that I have said enough tonight.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-nine minutes past Ten o'clock.